NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCES
What are Non-renewable resources?
Non – renewable resources are natural resources that cannot be readily replaced by natural means at a quick enough pace to keep up with consumption. Fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal are examples of nonrenewable resources. Humans extract them in gas, liquid, or solid form and then convert them for their use, mainly related to energy.
Coal
Coal is a rock created from buried plants that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago. Coal isn’t a good choice of energy source because coal has the highest level of carbon of all fossil fuels which means it produces a higher amount of greenhouse gas.
Gas
Natural gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel formed from the remains of tiny sea plants and animals that died 300-400 million years ago. Natural gas can be tricky to find, as it's generally trapped in rocks located deep underground.
Oil
Oil is made out of animal and plant remains, of animals that had lived in water many millions years ago.
Global impact of non – renewable resources
Non – renewable resources effect our planet in many negative ways such as greenhouse gas emission, air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, oil spills and other accidents. Non – renewable resources can often pollute the environment and cause other damage, making the switch to renewable energy even more important to prevent sea level rising, extreme weather and biodiversity loss.
Some alternatives to fossil fuel
Hydrogen gas – unlike other forms of natural gas, hydrogen is a completely clean burning fuel. Once produced, hydrogen gas cell emit only water vapor and warm air when in use.
Biofuels – in contrast to biomass energy sources, biofuels make use of animal and plant life to create energy. In essence they are fuels that can be obtained from some form of organic matter.
Solar power – the technology has evolved massively over the years and is now used for large – scale energy production and power generation for single homes.
WHY do we Keep using non-renewable resources?
Even though non-renewable resources aren't good for the Earth, we still using them because they are easier to extract and transport, they have lower prices than renewable resources and actually our technology is adapted to this resources.
Nowadays the economy of many countries depends on trade in these non-renewable resources, and also the production of these resources is more regular than that of non-renewable resources.