• Question: Do you think that there is such thing as a totally renewable energy source?

    Asked by spacenut1982 to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Hi Spacenut,

      The sun is probably the closest thing we have! Solar energy is going to keep going until the sun runs out of fuel but that’s 5 billion years away! so if we could make solar cells more efficient then we could have as much as energy as we wanted!

      And it’s not just making solar cells more efficient, but being able store the energy – so taht we can have electricity at night time too!

    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      practically renewable – yes
      totally renewable – no

      The sun will provide enough energy for a few billion years, but even it is using fuel and that fuel will one day run out. The laws of thermodynamics say that no system can be 100% efficient, whenever you try to change energy from one form to another there will always be losses.

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