Go Greener Tips

The reserves of fossil energy sources are melting before our eyes. According to various sources, we will be able to use oil and gas not more than during next 20-40 years, as for coal and uranium – 150-250 years. It is clear that the fastest depleted are oil reserves: annual world oil consume equals the amount of it formed during 2 million years in natural conditions. Moreover, environmental damage from the so-called “greenhouse effect” and destruction of ecosystems has been becoming increasingly evident during the last decade and the question of disposal of nuclear waste in the nuclear industry has not been resolved yet. And the more all these problems are becoming to be seen, the faster the “advanced” countries are turning to alternative sources of energy. They pay particular attention to solar energy.
According to the researchers` data, the annual solar energy equals about 100 trillion tons – in terms of conventional fuel. Given that we can scrape up $6 trillion tons of hydrocarbons all over the Earth, it means that the sun would have coped with the “replacement” for such stock just during 3 weeks. As the U.S. magazine Scientific American Magazine says, «the amount of sunlight that Earth receives in 40 minutes, is sufficient for its electricity supply within the whole year. According to scientists, only 1% of annual relative solar “fuel”, in the words 1 trillion tons, would have decided all the energy problems of mankind for hundreds of thousands of years.
Germany is the pioneer in this direction. This country adopted a program of “solarisation” called “1 000 solar roofs” (roofs are being put by the special elements for the converting of solar energy into electricity), which have now become even prestigious. They did it at the state level in 1990. The state supports and encourages those who wish to acquire a piece of the sun by various compensations. It is known that Germany have refused to build new nuclear power plants long time ago and there are plans to stop all of them till 2020). Furthermore, the state still buys surplus electricity from the owners of such houses.
EU having studied the best practices in Germany, has developed a project for all EU countries – “100 000 solar roofs”. Today no longer build hundreds and millions of square meters of roofs in Europe annually. In addition to these developments, there are other examples of the solar energy use. For example, in Spain, in Seville, more than 6000 homes are provided with the electricity from the giant energy plant – 40-storey building that focuses the light from more than 600 mirrors, each with an area of 120 square meters. A huge “solar farm” of 52 thousand solar panels is built in Portugal. It produces 11 MW of energy and provides 8 000 houses with electricity (like the experts say, it should produce 20 gigawatt-hours of electricity that will reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions on 13 thousand tons). Sweden plans to abandon the hydrocarbon fuel completely till 2020.
So, it is clear that the solar power energy system is developing in EU even now. May be we will see the hydrocarbon fuel free Europe in the next decades.

Luckily we live in the times when the government start to understand the value of living in harmony with the nature on this planet. And solar power grants is a real case proof of it. If you want to switch to solar energy, please find out more about how solar power grants and how exactly you can exploit these solar power grants for your living.

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