Renewables are not enough, is the environment screwed?

Every green energy resource is renewable but not all renewable energy resources are clean. Although when compared to the traditional fossil fuels, the 'dirty' renewables are far cleaner and this makes renewable energy resources generally preferable to fossil fuels because they are environment friendly.

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Traditional fossil fuels over the decades have caused emissions of greenhouse gases that are toxic to the environment, most especially CO2 - the gas which scientists strongly believe is the largest contributor to global warming.

Due to climate change caused by global warming, environmentalists' crusades over the years have been that there should be a total shift from fossil fuels to renewables so that the environment can be preserved and habitable for humankind and animals.

Now considering the shift from fossil fuels, there have been debates on whether renewable energy resources will be able to fill in the gap for traditional fuels. Renewable energy resources are mostly intermittent- solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectric energy have their sources not available continuously making them to be on and off resources. Bioenergy raises the question about food security- should the limited land be for plants that produce food or plants that are used for producing fuels, considering that there are so many people starving in the world. Geothermal and hydrogen and fuel cellss are up coming as they are more deployed in developed countries.

These challenges faced by renewable energy pose the uncertainty of whether renewables are enough to keep the lights on or whether the global warming age would continue as a result of burning fossil fuels - coal and crude oil products - to make sure that the energy demands of consumers are met.

I think there is hope for the environment because it is evident that developed countries have been able to develop and deploy renewable energy technologies on a large scale in their energy mix with plans to increase renewables' share go over fossil fuel in years to come. Another poser would be from developing and underdeveloped countries, which would be faced with the challenge of choosing between deploying renewable energy technologies which are expensive over existing traditional fuel plants and their readily available resources that are in some cases in abundance.

Finally, I hope that the capacity to develop renewable energy technologies in these developing countries grow immensely and grow further in developed countries so that RETs would be cheap and available to all if possible, and then the use of fossil fuels would be completely eliminated- if possible- so that the environment is saved and safe for all.

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