How ancient are renewable energy examples exactly?

How ancient are renewable energy examples exactly?

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Renewable energy is not some marvel of contemporary technology, it is an ancient thing that assisted to construct human civilisation.

Although many people would think of that we have been burning nonrenewable fuel sources because the start of civilisation, non-renewable sources of energy just truly happened during the industrial transformation just over two centuries back. Even the most high-tech renewables are just as old. Around the time of the industrial transformation a 19-year-old French physicist produced the world's solar battery whilst experimenting in his parent's lab, converting sunshine into electricity. Today, solar is the least expensive electricity that mankind has ever produced, and individuals like the CEO of Ecotricity's institutional shareholders are at the leading edge of harnessing both the ecological and economic benefits of renewable energy to continue composing this history, one that begins not in the 21st century, but numerous centuries before.

Although this may sound weird, the sources of renewable energy that we would probably identify today in fact date back over 4 thousand years. Wind is a significant cornerstone of lots of countries' plan to turn their energy grids green, especially in countries that don't have the blessing of year-round sunshine. The first example of human beings harnessing the energy of the wind was around 4,000 years back, when we captured it in our sails converted it into kinetic energy that could bring us across the seas, exploring the world around us and trading with other civilisations. A couple of centuries later on, the first recognized examples of hydropower emerged, whereby rivers and streams powered waterwheels and other devices that might cut stone or grind grains. It was around the very same time that we find the first account of solar energy too; legend has it that a hero used a series of mirrors to burn an invading armada, focusing the power of the sun to develop directed heat energy, and comparable contraptions were used to light torches or fires in excellent buildings.

One can easily be excused for imaging that non-renewable energy merely must have been the basis for all of humankind's production of power all throughout our history. The Earth has actually been subjected to considerable modifications because of the quantity of fossil fuels that have been burnt throughout human history. Nevertheless, that is altering, and a brand-new era of renewable energy, pushed forward by individuals like the founder of the hedge fund with a stake in Energias de Portugal and the co-founder of Octopus Energy's parent company, is beginning to emerge. In contrast to what one may think, this is not necessarily a modern-day advancement; in fact, for more than two millennia, we have collected the power of the components to develop energy, and the technology for producing energy from solar power is as old as the combustion engine; in almost all methods, it is a more natural mode of energy production than burning nonrenewable fuel sources.