Renewable energy is the energy that comes from renewable natural resources, or in other words, can be defined clean energy, which does not cause any form of forms of pollution.
There are several sources of renewable energy, such as wind and water, sunlight and also through water tidal waves.
In the recent years, many countries have changed their plans to lower the reliance on fossil fuel and to increase the renewable energy reliance. In addition, their plans include the decrease of consumption compared to the production of energy, to be renewable energy reliant by the year 2020, as stated in Kyoto Conference in Japan.
The most common Renewable Energy Sources are:
- Solar Energy: Generated by Photovoltaic Panels that captures the energy from sun rays.
- Wind Energy: Generated by giant wind-powered fans that convert energy into electrical energy.
- Hydroelectric Energy: Depends on the use of the water flow for electric power generation
A Zero-Energy Building (ZEB) is a term known to describe the building that consumes 0% of the power supply with an average carbon. These buildings can adopt to work completely on renewable energy as a source of Electricity, compared to, as proved by recent studies, the traditional buildings that consume 40% of fossil energy, in the United States and the European Union
The first time the term Zero-Energy Building (ZEB) was used was in the 1980s
We can identify the countries that are most dependent on renewable energy as follows:
- Iceland: comes in the forefront of countries based on renewable energy, where they provide 100% of their electricity through the clean energy sources
- Norway: They provide 97% of power need through renewable energy
- Sweden: 50% of their energy is generated by hydropower
- Portugal and Denmark: Have been able to generate up to 47% of their energy through renewable sources.
- Spain: They had been able to generate 30% of its energy needs through wind power, where it is the highest energy generating country from wind energy
- Germany: Ranks first globally in generating electricity using solar energy
