Environmental Aspects of Renewable Energy Sources

This review surveys the literature treating environmental characteristics of renewable energy sources. The material drawn on includes (a) some well-known energy-environmental data bases and comparative surveys, which, although generally emphasizing nonrenewable sources, touch on renewables as well; (b) the small number of recent reports whose main focus is environmental comparisons of renewable energy sources with each other and with nonrenewables; (c) comparate surveys of technologic and economic characteristics of renewable sources, which touch incidentally on environmental characteristics; and (d) studies covering individual renewable energy sources or individual environmental issues for a range of sources. This literature is reviewed in four steps, namely; (1) consider what information is required for comprehensive, comparative assessment of the environmental effects of energy alternatives, and evaluate briefly the coverage of the extant literature on renewable sources against this standard; (2) summarize the technical characteristics of the most promising renewable-energy technologies, emphasizing how these characteristics give rise to environmental problems; (3) compare the most-promising renewables to each other and to selected nonrenewables with respect to the main categories of environmental problems, quantitatively where possible; and (4) offer some suggestions concerning implications for energy choices and directions for further work. 198 references, 8 tables.