Sustainability and renewable energy

These days people often talk about sustainability. Whether it’s your mum or dad telling you to recycle or to turn off switches after you use things so you don’t waste electricity. But what is sustainability?

‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Brundtland, 1987).

As resources like coal will eventually run out we need to look at other ways of producing electricity.

However as the demand for electricity is always increasing, we need to find more innovative ways of generating and distributing power on a large scale. One of the ways this can be done is by using renewable sources of energy.

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy or green energy is energy that comes from natural sources (like the sun, wind and waves) and will never run out because they are constantly being renewed. 

Non-renewable energy or fossil fuels, like coal and oil will run out one day and that is why we need to use more renewable energy.