While recent economic troubles have kept carbon emissions about 1.4 percent lower than expected, 2010 records showed a surprising increase in fossil fuel use. Emissions have increased by 49 percent since 1990, or a rate of about 3.1 percent per year. This suggests that current attempts to avoid significant climate change may be ineffective.

As students in PhD programs like environmental science very well know, about 80 percent of the world’s energy still comes from burning fossil fuels, with the remaining 20 percent made up of solar power, geothermal energy, wind power and other alternative sources. The pace at which humans produce fossil fuel emissions increases the risk of temperatures rising high enough to cause severe agricultural problems, ice melt and weather pattern changes. As of 2011, few governments or corporations are making major changes to reduce fuel use, so emissions are expected to keep on growing at roughly the same rate.

Wind energy sector may indeed be the fastest growing renewable energy sector in the world but this does not mean that everything is going smoothly in wind energy industry. Like any other energy source wind energy also has its good and bad sides, and if we are to believe the results of the latest detailed study of Britain’s onshore wind farms then bad side of wind farms in Britain is efficiency problem that continues to make wind energy less competitive to fossil fuels.

According to results of this study more than 20 wind farms in United Kingdom produce less than a fifth of their potential maximum power output, with two wind farms operating at less than 10% of its maximum capacity. Even the largest wind farm in the country, The High Volts 2, Co Durham, when last measured achieved only 18.7% of its maximum efficiency, and the acceptable norm of efficiency for wind farms is 25-30%.

Solar energy facts. Solar energy is renewable energy source. Read some interesting facts about solar energy.

Sun is ours closest star and directly or indirectly source of almost all available energy on Earth. Sun's energy originates from nuclear fusion in its core, where temperature reaches 15 millions °C. Nuclear fusion is process of joining two light atoms into one heavier atom.

Thanks to nuclear fusion on Sun, every second about 600 million tons of hydrogen is transformed into helium, having 4 million tons of hydrogen transformed into energy as side effect. Solar energy facts:

• The Sun has been producing energy for billions of years now and by current estimations it will continue to do that for next five billions of years. Solar energy is part of energy produced on the Sun that reaches the Earth.
   
• Solar energy can be directly converted into thermal energy or into electrical energy which are useful forms of energy. Electrical energy is most useful form of energy because it can be easily converted into useful work.
   
• Solar energy is “the engine” beyond almost all renewable energy sources. Secondary solar energy powered resources such as wind energy, wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available renewable energy on earth. Geothermal and tidal energy are not considered as secondary products of solar energy because they exist even without solar radiation.
   

Solar energy is the most abundant form of energy on our planet, and world should be definitely using much more solar energy to satisfy its ever-growing hunger for energy. This however is still not possible because solar energy technologies are still too expensive, and also lack adequate efficiency to compete with fossil fuels. The one thing that can overcome these solar energy drawbacks is advanced solar energy research. Many energy experts will agree that the thing that solar energy sector desperately needs are cheap and highly efficient solar panels and solar cells, and finding solution for this is the holy grail of all solar energy researches.

US is also seeking for new scientific solutions to make solar energy more competitive to other energy sources and the latest proof to this is the fact that The Department of Energy will provide $122 million over five years for advanced solar energy research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will focus on studying artificial photosynthesis - methods of generating energy from the sun the same way plants do. If science could emulate plants in creating energy from the Sun then this would really mean a breakthrough on global energy scale that would reduce dependence on oil, and also improve energy security for years to come. The ultimate goal of this research would be a commercialization of artificial photosynthesis, something that for now looks only good in theory.

Biomass is one of renewable energy sources and refers to biological material derived from living organisms such as wood and waste. Biomass is not only used to generate electricity as it is also able to produce heat. Among the simplest examples of biomass are the forest residues such as dead trees and wood chips, which have shown very good potential as energy sources. Biomass also includes plant or animal matter used for production of fibers or chemicals. Biomass energy has very long history and has been used in primitive forms since the early days of mankind. Burning wood in a cave is also a form of biomass energy, a simple conversion of an organic material to heat. Putted in even simpler words, a fire converts the organic wood into heat.

The other thing one need to know about biomass is that biomass energy is derived from five distinct energy sources: garbage, wood, waste, landfill gases, and alcohol fuels. Biomass can be relatively easy converted to other usable forms of energy like methane gas or transportation fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. There are several conversion technologies that may release the energy directly, in the form of heat or electricity, or may convert it to another form, such as liquid biofuel or combustible biogas. Biomass is becoming very popular and getting worldwide acceptance day by day.

The building of world's largest solar power plant became one step closer after the proposed $6 billion-plus Blythe, California plant, originally proposed by Chevron Corp. and Solar Millennium AG won clearance to build from the California Energy Commission. Many energy experts believe that such move will no doubt give tremendous boost to US solar power industry, and open the door for many new solar energy projects. Once built, the plant should have a capacity of 1000 megawatts - 1GW. 1000 megawatts is gigantic number when talking about the solar power and the best way to demonstrate this is a last year's data from the Solar Energy Industry Association which shows that the U.S. installed about 481 megawatts of solar energy in 2009, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. And to make comparison even better, the largest solar plants up to date are four times smaller, in the 200-350 megawatt range. We can compare this also to average capacity of nuclear power plant which is 846MW in US.

The working principle of this huge power plant will consist of using mirrors to heat a fluid that generates steam, which expands through steam turbine generators. The technique is known as parabolic trough technology, and is currently among the most popular solar power technologies. This is the largest solar energy project in California but not the only one, in fact it is one of nine proposed California solar plants that federal and state regulators are trying to evaluate by the end of the year, of course this one being the most important.

According to World Energy Council many of the best locations on the world for wave energy exploitation are placed on Australia’s southern coast. Scientists have mapped out Australian south coast from Geraldton in Western Australia to King Island in Tasmania to mark best places for generating electricity from wave energy and concluded that there can be generated five times more electricity than Australia’s current consumption.

Dr Mark Hemer from Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research's says: "If we look at the sustained energy resource along the southern coastline - and we're looking between Geraldton in West Australia and southern tip of Tasmania - that has a sustained wave energy resource of about five times larger than Australia's present day electricity consumption".