Advantages and disadvantages of renewable energies

The renewable energies are the set of energy sources obtained from the use of natural sources (sun, wind, water or animal and vegetable biomass). In the following article we are going to show the main advantages and disadvantages of renewable energies versus traditional energy sources or non-renewable energy sources.

Renewable Energies

Advantages and disadvantages of renewable energies

There are different types of renewable energies: solar energy (gets energy from the sun), wind energy (gets energy from the wind),hydro energy (gets energy from the flow of rivers), tidal energy (harnessing tidal power), energy obtained from organic matter (biomass or biogas) and geothermal energy (harnessing the Earth’s internal heat).

Advantages of renewable energies

  • They are inexhaustible. They come from infinite natural sources such as the sun or the wind.
  • They do not pollute. They do not generate waste or emissions of gases harmful to health. They are clean energies.
  • They are clean energies.
  • They generate jobs. They require labor both for the construction of stations and for their maintenance.
  • They do not generate waste, nor do they emit gases that are harmful to health.
  • They help to achieve self-consumption. They allow self-supply to small population centers. In the cities more and more buildings are being built with solar panels that allow savings in energy consumption.

Disadvantages of renewable energies

  • They require high initial investment. If we want to produce large amounts of energy, a large initial economic investment is needed to build the power stations, such as wind farms.
  • Necessity of large space. For the amount of energy produced to be profitable, it is necessary to create large installations that require large spaces.
  • Dependence on atmospheric phenomena.  Weather is depended on for the performance of some types of energy such as solar (clear skies) or wind (wind speed dependence).
  • Dependence on the weather for the performance of some types of energy such as solar (clear skies) or wind (wind speed dependence).
  • Geographic Dependence. They cannot be applied everywhere equally, being in some areas impossible to apply due to geographical conditions. Geothermal energy can only be applied in certain areas.