Renewable versus Non-renewable resource
There is no denying the fact that in Modern
Economic theory, a non-renewable resource known as a predetermined
reserve is a resource that does not renovate itself at an appropriate rate for
supportable economic abstraction in expressive human time-frames. We can
introduce a model as carbon-based progressively resulting fuel. The unique biological
material, with the help of heat and pressure, becomes a gasoline such as oil or
gas, Fossil Fuel which may be considered as coal, petroleum, and natural
gas, are all non-renewable resources.
Metal ores are
supplementary examples of non-renewable resources. The metals themselves are
present-day in vast amounts in the earth's crust, and are constantly focused
and refilled over millions of years. However their extraction by humans only
occurs where they are concentrated by natural processes (such as heat,
pressure, organic activity, weathering and other processes) enough to become
economically viable to extract. These processes generally take from tens of
thousands to millions of years. As such, localized deposits of metal ores near
the surface which can be extracted economically by humans are non-renewable in
human time-frames, but on a world scale, metal ores as a whole are
inexhaustible, because the amount vastly exceeds human demand, on all time
frames. Though they are theoretically non-renewable, just like with rocks and
sand, humans could never deplete the world's supply. In this respect, metal
ores are considered vastly greater in supply to fossil fuels because metal ores
are formed by crustal scale processes which make up a much larger portion of
the earth's near-surface environment than those that form fossil fuels, which
are limited to areas where carbon-based life forms flourish, die, and are
quickly buried. These fossil fuel-forming environments occurred lengthily in
the Carboniferous Period.
In contrast, resources such as timber (when harvested sustainable) and wind (used to
power energy conversion systems) are considered renewable resources, largely because their
localized replenishment can occur within time frames meaningful to humans.
Non-renewable assets are:
·
Fossil fuel
·
Radioactive fuel
·
Renewable
resources
Natural resources such as coal, petroleum (crude
oil) and natural gas take thousands of years to form naturally and
cannot be replaced as fast as they are being consumed. Eventually it is
considered that fossil-based resources will become too costly to harvest and
humanity will need to shift its reliance to other sources of energy. These
resources are yet to be named.
An alternative hypothesis is that carbon
based fuel is virtually inexhaustible in human terms, if one includes all
sources of carbon-based energy such as methane hydrates on the sea floor, which
are vastly greater than all other carbon based fossil fuel resources combined.
These sources of carbon are also considered non-renewable, although their rate
of formation/replenishment on the sea floor is not known. However their
extraction at economically viable costs and rates has yet to be determined.
At present, the main energy source used by
humans is non-renewable fossil fuels. Since the dawn of internal combustion engine technologies
in the 17th century, petroleum and other fossil fuels have remained in
continual demand. As a result, conventional infrastructure and transport systems,
which are fitted to combustion engines, remain prominent throughout the globe.
The continual use of fossil fuels at the current rate is believed to
increase global warming and cause more severe climate change.
Renewable resources
Natural resources,
called renewable resources, are replaced by natural processes and forces persistent in
the natural environment. There are intermittent and reoccurring renewable,
and recyclable
materials, which are utilized during a cycle across a certain amount of time, and
can be harnessed for any number of cycles.
The production of goods and services by manufacturing products in economic systems creates
many types of waste during production and after
the consumer has
made use of it. The material is then either incinerated,
buried in a landfill or recycled for
reuse. Recycling turns materials of value that would otherwise become waste
into valuable resources again.
The natural environment, with soil, water, forests, plants and animals are all
renewable resources, as long as they are adequately monitored, protected and conserved. Sustainable agriculture is the cultivation
of plant materials in a manner that preserves plant and animal ecosystems over
the long term. The over-fishing of the oceans is one example of where an
industry practice or method can threaten an ecosystem, endanger species and possibly even determine
whether or not a fishery is sustainable for use by humans. An unregulated
industry practice or method can lead to a complete resource depletion.
The renewable energy from the sun, wind, wave, biomass and geothermal energies are based on renewable
resources. Renewable resources such as the movement of water (hydro-power, tidal power and wave power), wind and radiant energy from
geothermal heat (used for geothermal power)
and solar energy (used for solar power)
are practically infinite and cannot be depleted, unlike their non-renewable
counterparts, which are likely to run out if not used sparingly.
The potential wave energy on coastlines can
provide 1/5 of world demand. Hydroelectric power can supply 1/3 of our total
energy global needs. Geothermal energy can provide 1.5 more times the energy we
need. There is enough wind to power the planet 30 times over, wind power could
power all of humanity's needs alone. Solar currently supplies only 0.1% of our
world energy needs, but there is enough out there to power humanity's needs
4,000 times over, the entire global projected energy demand by 2020.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency are no longer
niche sectors that are promoted only by
governments and environmentalists. The increasing levels of investment and that
more of the capital is from conventional financial actors, both suggest that
sustainable energy has become mainstream and the future of energy production,
as non-renewable resources decline. This is reinforced by climate change concerns,
nuclear dangers and accumulating radioactive waste, high oil prices, peak oil and
increasing government support for renewable energy. These factors are commercializing renewable energy,
enlarging the market and growing demand, the adoption of new products to
replace obsolete technology and the conversion of existing infrastructure to a
renewable standard.
In economics, a non-renewable resource is
defined as goods, where greater consumption today implies
less consumption tomorrow. David Ricardo in
his early works analyzed the pricing of exhaustible resources, where he argued
that the price of a mineral resource should increase over time. He argued that
the spot price is always determined by the mine with the highest cost of
extraction, and mine owners with lower extraction costs benefit from a
differential rent. The first model is defined by Hotelling's rule,
which is a 1931 economic model of non-renewable resource management by Harold Ho telling.
It shows that efficient exploitation of a nonrenewable and non-augment able
resource would, under otherwise stable conditions, lead to a depletion of the resource. The rule states
that this would lead to a net price or "Ho telling rent"
for it that rose annually at a rate equal to the rate of interest,
reflecting the increasing scarcity of the resources. The Hart wick's rule provides
an important result about the sustainability of
welfare in an economy that uses non-renewable source.
However, nearly all metal prices have been
declining over time in inflation adjusted terms, because of a number of false
assumptions in the above. Firstly, metal resources are non-renewable, but on a
world scale, largely inexhaustible. This is because they are present throughout
the earth's crust on a vast scale, far exceeding human demand on all time
scales. Metal ores however, are only extracted in those areas where nature has
concentrated the metal in the crust to a level whereby it is locally economic
to extract. This also depends on the available technology for both finding the
metal ores as well as extracting them, which is constantly changing. If the
technology or demand changes, vast amounts of metal previously ignored can
become economically ex-tractable. This is why Ricardo's simplistic notion that
the price of a mineral resource should increase over time has in fact turned
out to be the opposite, nearly all metal ores have decreased in inflation
adjusted prices since well before the early 20th century. The main reason he
was wrong is that he assumed that metals are exhaustible on a world scale, and
he also misunderstood the effect of globally competing markets; in human terms
the amount of metal in the earth's crust is essentially limitless. It is only
in localized areas that metal ores can become depleted, as these local areas
compete with extraction costs of resources elsewhere, which does have
ramifications for the sustainability of local economies.
A renewable resource is a natural resource which
can replenish with the passage of time, either through biological reproduction
or other naturally recurring processes. Renewable resources are a part of Earth's natural environment and the largest
components of its ecosystem. A positive life cycle assessment is a key indicator
of a resource's sustainability. In 1962, Paul Alfred Weiss defined
Renewable Resources as: "The total range of living organisms providing man
with food, fibers, drugs, etc..."
Renewable resources may be the source
of power for renewable energy.
However, if the rate at which the renewable resource is consumed exceeds its
renewal rate, renewal and sustainability will not be ensured.
The term renewable resource also describes
systems like sustainable agriculture and water resources.
Sustainable harvesting of renewable resources (i.e., maintaining a positive
renewal rate) can reduce air pollution, soil contamination, habitat destruction and land degradation.
Gasoline, coal, natural gas, diesel and
other commodities derived from fossil fuels,
as well as minerals like copper and others, are non-renewable resources without a sustainable yield.
Renewable
resources endangered by the industrial world
Overfishing
Atlantic cod stocks
severely over-fished leading to abrupt collapse
"Ocean over fishing is simply the taking
of wildlife from the sea at rates too high for fished species to replace
themselves."
Examples of over-fishing exist in areas such
as the North Sea of Europe, the Grand Banks of North America and
the East China Sea of Asia.
The decline of penguin population
is caused in part by over-fishing, caused by human competition over the same
renewable resources
Sustainable
agriculture
The phrase sustainable agriculture was coined by
Australian agricultural scientist Gordon Mc Clymont.
It has been defined as "an integrated system of plant and animal
production practices having a site-specific application that will last over the
long term". Expansion of agricultural land has an impact on biodiversity and
contributes to deforestation. The Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations estimates that in coming decades, cropland will continue to
be lost to industrial and urban development, along with reclamation of
wetlands, and conversion of forest to cultivation, resulting in the loss of
biodiversity and increased soil erosion.
Poly-culture
Although air and sunlight are
available everywhere on Earth, crops also
depend on soil nutrients and
the availability of water. Mono culture is a method of
growing only one crop at a time in a given field, which can damage land and
cause it to become either unusable or suffer from reduced yields.
Mono-culture can also cause the build-up of pathogens and
pests that target one specific species. The Great Irish Famine (1845–1849) is a
well-known example of the dangers of mono culture.
Crop rotation and long-term crop rotations confer the
replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in
sequence with cereals and other crops, and can improve soil structure and fertility by
alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. Other methods to combat lost
soil nutrients are returning to natural cycles that annually flood cultivated
lands (returning lost nutrients indefinitely) such as the Flooding of the Nile, the long-term use
of bio char,
and use of crop and livestock land races that are adapted to
less than ideal conditions such as pests, drought, or lack of nutrients.
Agricultural practices are the single
greatest contributor to the global increase in soil erosion rates.
It is estimated that "more than a thousand million tons of southern
Africa's soil are eroded every year. Experts predict that crop yields will be
halved within thirty to fifty years if erosion continues at present
rates." The Dust Bowl phenomenon in the 1930s was caused by
severe drought combined
with farming methods that did not include crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops,
soil terracing and wind-breaking trees to prevent wind erosion.
The tillage of
agricultural lands is one of the primary contributing factors to erosion, due
to mechanized agricultural equipment that allows for deep plowing, which
severely increases the amount of soil that is available for transport by water erosion.
The phenomenon called Peak Soil describes how large-scale factory farming
techniques are jeopardizing humanity's ability to grow food in the present and
in the future. Without efforts to improve soil management practices, the
availability of arable soil will become increasingly problematic.
Methods to combat erosion include no-till farming,
using a Keyline design, growing wind breaks to hold
the soil, and widespread use of compost. Chemical fertilizer and pesticides can
also have an effect of soil erosion, which can contribute to soil salinity and
prevent other species from growing. Phosphate is
a primary component in the chemical fertilizer applied most commonly in modern
agricultural production. However, scientists estimate that rock phosphate
reserves will be depleted in 50–100 years and that Peak Phosphate will occur in
about 2030.
Industrial processing and logistics also
have an effect on agriculture's sustainability. The way and locations crops
are sold requires
energy for transportation, as well as the energy cost for materials, labor, and transport.
Food sold at a local location, such a farmers' market,
have reduced energy overheads.
Deforestation
Deforestation is a good example for renewable
asset because woods procured from the forest can be treated as an economic good
as it has opportunity cost which is foregone to next best desired alternatives.
As well as being a renewable resource for fuel and building material, trees
protect the environment by absorbing carbon dioxide and by creating oxygen. The
destruction of rain forests is one of the critical causes of climate change.
Deforestation causes carbon dioxide to linger in the atmosphere. As carbon
dioxide accrues, it produces a layer in the atmosphere that traps radiation
from the sun. The radiation converts to heat which causes global warming,
which is better known as the greenhouse effect.
Deforestation also affects the water cycle. It reduces the content of water in
the soil and groundwater as well as atmospheric moisture. Deforestation reduces
soil cohesion, so that erosion, flooding and landslides ensue.
Rain forest shelter many species and organisms providing local populations with
food and other commodities. In this way bio-fuels may well be unsustainable if
their production contributes to deforestation.
Endangered species
Some renewable resources, species and
organisms are facing a very high risk of extinction caused by growing human
population and over-consumption. It has been estimated that over 40% of all
living species on Earth are at risk of going extinct.[26] Many
nations have laws to protect hunted species and to restrict the practice of
hunting. Other conservation method includes restricting land development or
creating preserves. The IUCN Red List of
Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation
status listing and ranking system. Internationally, 199 countries have signed
an accord agreeing to create Biodiversity Action Plans to protect
endangered and other threatened species.
A natural wetland
There is no denying the fact that water can
be considered a renewable material when carefully controlled usage, treatment,
and release are followed. If not, it would become a non-renewable resource at
that location. For example, groundwater is
usually removed from an aquifer at a rate much greater than its very slow natural
recharge, and so groundwater is considered non-renewable. Removal of water from
the pore spaces may cause permanent compaction (subsidence)
that cannot be renewed. 97% of the water on the Earth is salt water, and 3%
is fresh water;
slightly over two thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps.
The remaining unfrozen freshwater is found mainly as groundwater, with only a
small fraction (0,008%) present above ground or in the air. Water pollution is
one of the main concerns regarding water resources. It is estimated that 22% of
worldwide water is used in industry. Major industrial users include
hydroelectric dams, photoelectric power plants, which use water for
cooling, ore and oil refineries,
which use water in chemical processes, and manufacturing plants, which use
water as a solvent.
Renewable
energy
Renewable energy is energy from natural resources such
as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat.
Common applications of renewable energies are electricity generation and motor fuels.
The reported problem with these renewable resources is that it is difficult and
expensive to harness enough power from them to match the effectiveness of
non-renewable resources.
Solar
Energy
Solar energy is the most abundant and easily
available renewable resource, and has been harnessed by humans since ancient times.
The solar energy not used by man is used by plants and other organisms in photosynthesis.
In one year, the Sun delivers more than 10,000 times the energy that humans
currently use, and almost twice the amount of energy that will ever be obtained
from all of the planet's non-renewable resources.
Solar power is
the conversion of sunlight into electricity,
either directly using photo voltaic indirectly using concentrated solar power .
Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to
focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photo voltaic convert light
into electric current using the photoelectric effect.
There are many domestic applications of solar
power including solar cookers, solar stills, solar water heating, solar heating and air conditioning.
A wind farm in Spain.
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a
useful form of energy. Most modern electrical wind power is generated by
converting the rotation of turbine blades into electrical currents by
means of an electrical generator. Windmills provide
mechanical power, and were originally developed for milling grain for
food production. The basic technique adopted in the blades of windmill to
facilitate proper rotation is the pressure difference among the blades. Other
industrial uses of windmill machinery are wind pumps,
used for water pumping or drainage.
Wind power is also used to propel ships using sails. Hydro power is
energy derived from the movement of water in rivers and oceans, originally used
for irrigation and
the operation of various mechanical devices. Since the early 20th century, the
term is used almost exclusively in conjunction with the modern development
of hydro-electric power. Conventional
hydroelectric power involves creating a dam, and using the
resulting water force to turn a water turbine and generator. Other electricity generating methods
are run-of-the-river hydroelectricity, which
captures the kinetic energy in rivers or streams, without the use of dams,
and pumped-storage hydroelectricity, which
stores water pumped during periods of low demand to be released for generation
when demand is high.
Geothermal
Energy
Geothermal energy comes from the Earth's
crust and originates from the original formation of the planet (20%) and
from radioactive decay of minerals. The
available energy from the Earth's crust and mantle is
approximately equal to that of incoming solar energy.
Geothermal heating is the direct use
of geothermal energy for heating
applications. Since paleolithic times, naturally occurring Hot springs have
been used for bathing.
Geothermal electricity is electricity
generated from geothermal energy using technologies like super heaters, flash steam power plants and binary cycle power plants. The first geothermal
power station was built at Larderello, Italy. Other countries that have
geothermal power stations are Japan, Iceland, the Philippines and the United
States. In Iceland, geothermal energy is used for electricity and heat. Brazil has bio ethanol made
from sugarcane available throughout the country. Shown a
typical petroleum gas station at Sao Paulo with dual fuel service, marked A for alcohol (ethanol) and
G for gasoline.
Bio-fuel
A bio-fuel is a type of fuel whose energy is
derived from biological carbon fixation.
Bio-fuels include fuels derived from biomass conversion,
as well as solid biomass, liquid fuels and
various biogases. Bio-ethanol is
an alcohol made
by fermentation, mostly from carbohydrates produced
in sugar or starch crops
such as corn, sugarcane or switch grass.
Bio-diesel is made from vegetable oils and animal fats.
Bio diesel is produced from oils or fats using trans esterification and is the most
common bio-fuel in Europe.
Biogas is methane produced
by the process of anaerobic digestion of organic material by anaerobes.,
etc. is also a renewable source of energy.
Renewable
materials
Biomass is biological
material from living, or recently living organisms, most often
referring to plants or plant-derived materials. As a renewable energy source, biomass can either be
used directly, or indirectly—once or converted into another type of energy
product such as bio-fuel. The use of biomass helps to sustain climate change,
increase energy efficiency, and decrease greenhouse gas emission.
Biomass is all biologically produced matter
based in carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The estimated biomass production in the
world is 146 billion tons a year, consisting of mostly wild plant growth.
Biomass energy is derived from six distinct energy sources: garbage, wood,
plants, waste, landfill gases, and alcohol fuels.
Historically, a human have harnessed biomass derived energy since the advent of
burning wood to make fire, and wood remains the largest biomass energy source
today. The biomass used for electricity generation varies by region. Forest
by-products, such as wood residues, are common in the United States.
Agricultural waste is common in Mauritius (sugar
cane residue) and Southeast Asia (rice husks). Animal
husbandry residues, such as poultry litter, are common in the UK. The biomass power
generating industry in the United States, which consists of approximately
11,000 MW of
summer operating capacity actively supplying power to the grid, produces about
1.4 percent of the U.S. electricity supply.
Bio-plastics
Bio plastics are a form of plastics derived
from renewable biomass sources, such as vegetable fats and oils, corn starch, pea starch or microbiol.
The most common starch. Other forms include Cellulose bio
plastics, bio polyester, Poly lactic acid,
and bio-derived poly ethylene.
The production and use of bio plastics is
generally regarded as a more sustainable
activity when compared with plastic production from petroleum
(petrol plastic), however manufacturing of bio plastic materials is often still
reliant upon petroleum as an energy and materials source. Because of the
fragmentation in the market and ambiguous definitions it is difficult to
describe the total market size for bio plastics, but estimates put global
production capacity at 327,000 tons. In contrast, global consumption of all
flexible packaging is estimated at around 12.3 million tons.
Bio
asphalt
Bio asphalt is an asphalt alternative
made from non-petroleum based renewable resources. Manufacturing sources of bio
asphalt include sugar, molasses and rice, corn and potato starches, and
vegetable oil based waste.
In view of the above, it is evident that
renewable and non-renewable assets are both vitally important in the sense that
these are economic goods and economic values are obtained from it. We are
getting oils and gases from the nature with which our industries are directly
dependent on it as renewable goods are no less important. We should
appoint our efforts and energy to procure and utilize these resources in a
significant manner.
