The origin and future of energy depend on the Sun. Our Sun does not only warm our Earth. As the heat rises the wind flows in to replace it. The Sun’s gravitational pull also influences the tides in conjunction with the Moon.
Our ancestors lived on their skills within this natural order. But they had an inventive spirit. They learned to manage fire, and harvest energy using draught animals, windmills, water wheels, and sails on their ships.
The Origin and Future of Fossil Fuels
The Sun also feeds the plants and the trees. It converts water and carbon dioxide into simple sugars that build them. Dead trees store the carbon dioxide perpetually in their fossilized remains.
Or at least that was the case, until our inventive ancestors found fossilized remains of trees as coal underground. Then they found they could release the ancient, stored solar energy when they burned it.
Releasing this stored energy kick-started the industrial revolution. That was the moment when our ancestors burned coal to boil water, and to make steam to drive mighty engines. Later they discovered oil and natural gas too. This completes this chapter in the origin and future of energy.
Rekindling the Future of Stored Solar
Burning the coal, oil, and natural gas worked a treat in power stations, because these generated cheap, abundant electricity. However, this process also caused aerial pollution which residents resented. Although only a few scientists knew of global warming yet.
The first hydropower power stations began to appear, followed by nuclear power stations. The former used gravity powered by the moon and the sun. The latter used uranium generated by violent cosmic events.
But now the wheel is turning in the direction of wind, solar, tidal, and gravitational energy, this time stored in batteries. Could we return to the natural sources of energy where our story of the origin and future of energy began? If so, then batteries will be there, for sure.
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Batteries and Climate Change Mitigation
