Feature Article

India is rapidly developing wind energy resources to satisfy its growing needs for electricity. However, the suitability of a particular location for the development of a wind energy project depends on a large number of factors.

Even if we succeed in curbing emissions, the heat our energy use releases into the environment might begin warming the planet.

In the context of growing emission of carbon dioxide in coal-based power stations, solar energy promises to be a viable alternative and a clean energy source. Yet, the market for solar energy remains small and uneconomic, confined as the system is to households in remote villages and delinked from the network of electricity grids.

The need to meet the growing energy demand from Zambia

What do a small Italian village, a community of millionaires in Oregon and a town in Austria have in common? Nearly all of their electricity needs are supplied by renewable energy. They are by no means the only ones. A growing number of communities are working towards using only electricity generated by renewables.

The unwavering predictability and scale of the tides in some parts of the world make them an attractive renewable energy source. Some estimates put the energy in the world's tides at as much as 1 million GWh per year, or about 5 per cent of the electricity generated worldwide, though only a fraction of this is likely to be exploited due to practical constraints.

The time and money being spent on wind power is perhaps not surprising when you consider that, based on global average annual wind speeds, worldwide there is the potential to generate 106 million gigawatt-hours of electricity per year from wind - five times the total amount of electricity generated globally today.

One of the key problems with renewables is their intermittent availability. You can only generate energy from the wind when it is blowing, or from the sun when it's shining. Critics argue this is why we will never be able to rely on renewables for the majority of our electricity generation. But that criticism may soon be silenced.

THE price of a cup of coffee. That's one estimate of what it will cost each American every day for the next 20 years to break the fossil fuel habit of generations and turn to renewables instead. A daily outlay of a shade under a couple of dollars does add up to trillions over the decades, but is it really that much to ask? (Editorial)

Smokestacks, cooling towers, reactor domes and gas installations are defining features of our modern landscape. Each is a key component in electricity generation, but perhaps not for much longer. Sprinkled over every continent are the totems of a new era of power: wind turbines and solar energy collectors. So far they are few and far between, but that's about to change.