Wind Energy: Renewable Energy and the Environment, 3rd Edition

1   Introduction

Industrialized societies run on energy, and as third world countries industrialize, especially China and India with their large populations, the demand for energy is increasing. Economists look at monetary values (dollars) to explain the manufacture and exchange of goods and services. However, in the final analysis, the physical commodity is the transfer of energy units. While industrialized nations comprise only one-fourth of the population of the world, they use four-fifths of the world’s energy. Most of these forms are solar energies that fall into two classifications:

Stored solar energy: Fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—all of them are finite and therefore depletable.

Renewable energy: Radiation, wind, biomass, hydro, ...