Three Common Challenges with Managing Renewable Energy Resources

Oil

• In the early twenty first century, virtually all transportation worldwide is powered by oil and its derivatives. In addition, large percentages of stationary power grids are powered by coal and other fossil fuels. While stationary power sources could be theoretically replaced with wind and solar sources, these renewable energy sources would produce far less power. There is no renewable power source that is energy-dense enough and portable enough to replace oil and its derivatives such as gasoline as a viable power source for vehicles. The infrastructure of the world has been constructed since the early twentieth century to be reliant on a constant supply of cheap oil.

Replacing Oil

• When oil supplies become unreliable or excessively expensive, the world will be looking toward alternative and renewable power sources to replace it. Electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells show promise, but they exhibit many problems when applied to mobile uses. Batteries are heavy, take up space in a vehicle, and wear out and need replacing. Widespread hydrogen use would require a hydrogen infrastructure that would cost billions to create. If, as some theorists claim, worldwide production of oil peaked in 2010, the world will be facing decreasing amounts of oil availability every year, and will not have time to develop the renewable sources before gasoline becomes exorbitantly expensive.

Power Storage

• Solar panels can only create electricity when the sun is shining, and windmills can only create electricity when the wind is blowing. Because of these limitations, power grids that depend on these sources either need ways of storing electricity or another means of producing electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. This is a major challenge to the idea of creating power grids that rely solely on renewable energy sources. The batteries that would be needed to store sufficient power to run an entire power grid would be enormous and impractical.

Land Use

• Neither windmills nor solar panels can be stuck in a closet and expected to work. Not only do they have to be out on the landscape, they have to be distributed widely to function. This isn't a problem for small installations, but in the case of public power grids, the level of land use involved can become prohibitive. Some developers are designing ocean wind farms as a means of avoiding using up more land for windmills.