Apply for RnE²EW

Educator Resources

Green things to do!

Learning About Renewable Energy

Overview

RnE²EW and Your School

RnE²EW Kids

RnE²EW Van

Schedule RnE²EW

Science Project of
the Month

Can you imagine life without television, cars, or computers? What if you had to cook your dinner over a fire or fetch water from a river? It might be fun for a camping trip, but you probably would not want to do it every day. But that's how life was before scientists and inventors discovered ways to use energy to make our lives easier.

Today, most of the energy we use comes from fossil fuels. Coal, oil, and natural gas are all fossil fuels. Over millions of years, the decay of plants, dinosaurs, and other animals was formed into fossil fuels. These fuels lie buried between layers of earth and rock. The only way to get them out is to drill or mine for them. While fossil fuels are still being mined today by underground heat and pressure, they are being consumed more rapidly than they are created. For that reason, fossil fuels are considered nonrenewable; that is, they are not replaced as soon as we use them. So, we could run out of them sometime in the future. Or, we might someday use so much fossil fuel that we won't be able to drill or mine fast enough to keep up with the demand.

Because our world depends so much on energy, we need to find sources of energy that will last a long time. What if there was a type of energy that never ran out? There is. It is called renewable energy.

In addition, because there are so many people on the earth using fossil fuels, we create a lot of pollution. So, we should also use energy sources that produce as little pollution as possible. While all energy sources cause some pollution in their creation or their consumption, renewable energy systems generally are less polluting than fossil fuel systems.