- What are renewable resources?
- Examples of renewable resources
- Nonrenewable resources
- Inexhaustible resources
We explain what renewable resources are and various examples. Also, differences with inexhaustible and non-renewable resources.
What are renewable resources?
Renewable resources are those natural resources that normally restore their stocks at a rate equal to or greater than that of consumption by the Humans. That is, they are those that, as their name indicates, renew themselves, making them usable almost without risk that they will be finished in the long term.
The renewal is possible if their consumption is responsible, within the recoverable margins for their natural regeneration processes, since they are not unlimited resources. In addition, the responsible consumption of these renewable resources poses a much lower risk to the environment that the consumption of nonrenewable resources, Like the fossil fuels.
Renewable resources can consist of forms of Energy or from matter, that the human being is able to take advantage of to produce goods or services that make your life more pleasant.
Examples of renewable resources
Some examples of renewable energy are:
- Wind power. As a result of the uneven heating of the Earth crust, the winds travel it with greater or lesser intensity, being usable to generate electricity using wind turbines, which are large windmills connected to electrical generators. This type of energy currently provides 5% of the world's energy, with a environmental impact much less than other forms of fuel.
- Biofuels. Unlike fossil fuels (coal and Petroleum), biofuels are renewable insofar as they are produced from the decomposition of organic material vegetable, which can be harvested for these purposes.
- Geothermal energy. This is the name given to the use of heat from our planet, which at shallow depth is already perceptible and capable of boiling Water to thus mobilize electric generators. This is how geothermal electricity plants work, making use of a renewable resource, since the earth's heat emanates from its burning core in the remote depths, and from the effect on matter of its own density Y gravity.
- Drinking water. Our planet is made up of two thirds of water (oceans, rivers, lakes, ice and atmospheric vapor), part of a water cycle that keeps it flowing and renewing itself. However, only a percentage of it is drinkable, that is, it is safe for human consumption. Therefore, in principle, it is a renewable resource; water on the planet may never be depleted, but it may become practically untouchable if the we pollute at a faster rate than she manages to purify herself.
Nonrenewable resources
Non-renewable resources are, as their name implies, those that are not capable of naturally renewing themselves, or that do so at such a slow rate that it would never compensate for the speed of their consumption by humanity.
These natural resources tend to disappear, to be depleted, and that is why they must be managed with a scarcity criterion, even if they are momentarily abundant. Examples of this type of resource are petroleum, mineral coal and natural gas.
Inexhaustible resources
The inexhaustible resources are those that are present in the nature in margins of abundance such that it is practically impossible to exhaust them. That is why they are also known as superabundant resources.
Examples of this type of resource are hydrogen, earth, seas wave solar energy.