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HOW IT AFFECTS​

Aside from the issues faced by people on low utilization (or no utilization) to clean energy, the current existing sources of electricity production also poses a much greater threat to not just human health and wellbeing, but to the whole climatic and ecological system of the world.


Well over 85% of the current global commercial power generation uses non-renewable fossil-fuel sources. Unlike renewable energy sources like solar energy which is unlimited (renewable and sustainable), these non-renewable sources are very limited on the planet, and risk being rapidly depleted in the near to medium-term future. The real problem arises due to the fact that all these sources require igniting the fuel source to generate kinetic energy to run the power plant.


These burning and ignition processes of all the tens of thousands of power stations of the world, dumps immense amounts of pollutants and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, threatening plant and animal life, human wellbeing, and speeding global warming, thus tipping the entire global ecological and climatic balance.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas (GHG), is a common element released during fossil-fuel burning. The above map shows the world annual average carbon dioxide emissions in thousands of metric tonnes (as of 2007) by country. Apart from fossil-fuel burning power stations and other sources of CO2 emissions, a large percentage of it is also produced by vehicles running on fossil-fuels. Source: Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0.

 

Depending on the type of power plant or the way the fuel gathering process is conducted, most fossil-fuel power stations also contaminates lakes, rivers, or other water resources like groundwater, by discharging cooling water (which is warm) or waste water that may contain lead or other elements. This contamination could cause adverse chain reactions and affect the health of people using the same water source, or the health of ecological life such as plants or animals.

 

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References:

http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/water-discharge.html
http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/2599XXX/page010.html

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