Fossil Fuels
This is the dirtiest type of coal, containing the highest amount of impurities and the lowest heat content.
What is Lignite?
This pollutant, released when coal is burned, contributes significantly to acid precipitation by reacting with water vapor in the atmosphere.
What is Sulfur Dioxide?
These components are inserted into the reactor core to absorb excess neutrons, thus controlling the rate of the nuclear fission chain reaction.
What are Control Rods?
This type of solar energy system uses mechanical or electrical equipment (like PV cells) to capture and convert sunlight directly into electricity.
What is Active Solar Energy?
This system uses digital two-way communication to monitor and optimize energy usage across the grid, reducing energy waste and improving efficiency.
What is a Smart Grid?
This non-renewable energy source is primarily composed of methane and produces the least amount of C02 when burned compared to coal or oil.
What is Natural Gas?
This is the specific term for the simultaneous production of both electricity and useful heat from the same fuel source, which significantly increases energy efficiency.
What is Cogeneration?
This site in Nevada was designated by the U.S. government as the long-term geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste, though its use is currently stalled.
What is Yucca Mountain?
This renewable energy source generates electricity by using the heat from the Earth's interior to convert water into steam.
What is Geothermal Energy?
Name the two developing nations that currently show the greatest upward trend in total energy consumption due to industrialization.
What are China and India?
The ratio that compares the amount of energy we get from a resource to the amount of energy we invest to get it.
What is EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested)?
Describe the role of the boiler in a typical fossil fuel power plant.
What is heating water to produce high-pressure steam?
This is the major environmental impact associated with the large-scale use of dams for hydroelectric power.
What is the Displacement of People/Wildlife?
The primary environmental drawback of wind energy, which involves mortality for flying animals.
What is the death of birds and bats?
Installing properly oriented windows and using thermal mass materials like concrete floors to store heat are examples of this design strategy.
What is Passive Solar Design?
This process is used to separate crude oil into different usable components like gasoline, diesel, and asphalt, based on their boiling points.
What is Refining (or Fractional Distillation)?
The destruction of large areas of habitat and removal of topsoil during resource extraction is an example of the interaction between human activity and this Earth system.
What is the Biosphere?
This process, where two smaller atomic nuclei combine to form a single, heavier nucleus, is a potential future energy source but is currently not commercially viable.
What is Nuclear Fusion?
This technology splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity, a process which could lead to a less polluting vehicle fuel.
What is Electrolysis?
This term describes the amount of energy produced by an energy source minus the energy consumed to get it to the user.
What is Net Energy?
Extracting oil by injecting steam, hot water, or chemicals into the well to push the remaining oil out is known by this three-word term.
What is Secondary Oil Recovery (or Enhanced Oil Recovery)?
This specific type of coal mining technique is known for causing the most severe and irreversible landscape changes, as well as habitat loss.
What is Mountaintop Removal?
This is the primary long-term challenge and negative consequence associated with the use of nuclear power.
What is the Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Waste?
Large-scale production of this fuel from crops like corn or sugar cane can increase food prices and reduce arable land availability.
What is Ethanol?
Replacing incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs or purchasing a high-efficiency appliance are examples of this energy strategy, which aims to get more work out of the same energy input.
What is Energy Efficiency?