green106

Green 106

Forms of energy

It is not acceptable to consider green issues, particularly issues regarding remedies to global warming and climate change, without first giving attention to different forms of energy. It is too easy to ignore the wide range of forms of energy. Here below are listed some of the different forms of energy and their general provenance.

Electricity

Energy has become nearly synonymous with electrical energy. Every room in my house has electricity to power electric lighting, and with the exception of the bathroom every room has multiple electrical sockets in order to power the washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher, fridges, freezers, grill, oven, convection oven, microwave ovens, bread maker, toaster, bread slicer, kettle, espresso machine, coffee maker, teasmade, food processor, food mixer, mixing wand, central heating timer, central heating radiator pump, iron, televisions, VCR, DVD players, hi-fi separates, digital radio, audio cassette players, wi-fi network, computers, battery rechargers for: cameras, camcorders, cellphones, blue-tooth hands-free ear-pieces, [list to be continued]

Heat

Much energy is used in creating heat: for hot water, for space heating, for cooking. There are several different sources of direct heat.

Heat: combustion

Natural gas is pumped to my house, and this is burned to heat water both for direct use, such as in the bath, and in central heating radiators, and also for cooking on the hob. Although the natural gas (methane from beneath the North Sea) network dates only from the 1960s, the use of combustible gas as a form of energy predates the domestic use of electricity.

It feels not only neolithic to cook on charcoal, but unreasonably naughty: polluting clean, smoke-free air, and contributing to global warming. However, many people around the world cook over, or heat their ovens using, burning wood. I recall eating piping hot, smoky-tasting pizza baked in a charcoal oven both in Italy and in the-former-Yugoslavia.

Heat: groundsource

I recall, years ago, reading about how the Royal Festival Hall in London, UK, takes its heat from the River Thames. At one and the same time I found this idea both intelligible and intriguing, and also unbelievable - how could a building possibly be heated using cold river water? The answer to my disbelief is: refrigeration in reverse. Now people with large properties and even larger grounds can lay, at great expense, vast lengths of piping to extract heat from the ground, and then pay heating bills only one third the size to heat their large property.

Heat: solar

Whilst most attention is given to solar panels that convert sunlight to electricity, there are solar systems that sit on a house roof that heat water. This water is likely to be used for space heating.

Heat: geothermal

I understand that in Japan, the water in some of the natural onsen is geothermally heated. I also understand that in Iceland, there are swimming pools filled with geothermally-heated water, and that there are geothermally-heated greenhouses growing salad vegetables.

Kinetic energy

When considering the energy of movement, it is easy to think in terms of transforming the kinetic energy into electrical energy. However, this has not always been the case.

Kinetic energy: wind

As I look towards Whitburn, northwards out of my office window in Sunderland, UK, I can see a white-painted windmill. In days past, kinetic energy from the wind would be used to grind the grains of corn. I guess that there are still places in East Anglia, UK, where kinetic energy from the wind is used to pump water out of fields and ditches into the fens. Encircling the horizon, on hills for about five miles around, there are wind powered turbines, like monstrous metal flowers, petals gyrating in the breeze, generating electricity.

Kinetic energy: water

Not far from my house is Shincliffe Mill. I have yet to find out what was milled there in times past, using the kinetic energy of the flowing water. In the centre of Durham, the former ice rink was based on the site of a mill. The sluices remain in existence, and old prints show the water wheels that powered the mill. On the bank of the channel linking Lough Neagh, Northern Ireland, to the Irish Sea, there is a tidal mill: kinetic energy from the diurnal tidal flow of water is harnessed.

Kinetic energy: animal

Nearly two thousand years ago, oxen would pull carts laden with olives and wine, parchment and ink, picks and shovels northwards past my house to the soldiers, officers and their families garrisoned at forts along the Roman wall. Even a century ago, much of the traffic past my house would have involved people on horseback. One hundred and fifty years ago, short, stocky ponies were used at Shincliffe Colliery for hauling tubs of coal out of the mine. At High Butterby, an organic farm a mile or two from Shincliffe, live two donkeys. Not too long ago the ancestors of these donkeys may have been used, as some still are in the developing world, for threshing cereals.