Advantages

• Good for environment as the carbon dioxide it releases is only months old so is part of the normal carbon cycle.
• Biomass doesn't emit additional carbon dioxide (CO2), like fossil fuels. It releases the CO2 that it took in during its short lifetime. Using biomass instead of fossil fuels prevents further addition of CO2 in our atmosphere.
• Biomass can be used to make a variety of fuels to generate electricity
• Biomass is used for the production of chemical products
• Biomass waste can help in reducing disposal costs
• Biomass waste can extend the life of landfills
• biomass is renewable.
• it can make our life easier
• Can use waste products and therefore can have negative fuel costs
• Can create several products - electricity/heat/biogas/biofuel
• Very large resource
• Lots of different technology
• released in several ways

Disadvantages

• Biocrops have a higher value than food and can detract food production, leading to food shortages and increased prices
• Heat and some pollutants are released into the atmosphere, adding to global warming

Hydro comes from the Greek word for water. Hydro-electricity, or hydro-power, is usually generated by turbines in a dam in a river. The dam means that a great body of water builds up in the river valley behind the dam. This is released through the turbines when electricity is needed.

Smaller than dams are barrages across the mouths of rivers which capture water from high tides and release it to generate electricity. Smaller still are turbines in river and tidal streams which do the same thing.

A. Advantages:

• Does not depend on costs of uranium, oil, or other fuels
• Pollution is rarely created
• It doesn't require as many employees
• It can be set up in many sizes
• Stations can operate and run for long periods of time
• Reduces greenhouse emissions
• Relatively low maintenance costs
• Can be used throughout the world
• It is renewable
• Hydroelectricity produces no gas emissions or waste.
• Hydroelectric stations are inexpensive to operate.
• Makes barely any pollution compare to other ways of creating electricity
• Hydroelectric power is one of the most responsive (easy to start and stop) of any electric power generating source.
• The conversion of the forces of water to electric energy can be up to 90 percent efficient.
• Hydroelectric power produces no chemical or waste heat pollution.
• Hydroelectric power plants require little maintenance.
• Reservoir lakes can be used for recreation, and can provide considerable flood protection to downstream areas.
• Groundwater reserves are increased by recharging from reservoirs.
• Plants usually have an expected life span two to three times longer than conventional thermal power plants.
• Hydroelectric installations can be used to breed fish and other aquatic products
• It is more reliable than solar and wind power - because water can be stored and there is more of it, more often.Once a dam is constructed, electricity can be produced at a constant rate.
• If electricity is not needed, the sluice gates can be shut, stopping electricity generation. The water can be saved for use another time when electricity demand is high. The build up of water in the lake means that energy can be stored until needed, when the water is released to produce electricity.
• Dams are designed to last many decades and so can contribute to the generation of electricity for many years / decades.
• The lake that forms behind the dam can be used for water sports and leisure / pleasure activities. Often large dams become tourist attractions in their own right.
• The lake's water can be used for irrigation purposes.
• When in use, electricity produced by dam systems do not produce green house gases. They do not pollute the atmosphere.
• Hydropower is a fueled by water, so it's a clean fuel source. Hydropower doesn't pollute the air like power plants that burn fossil fuels, such as coal, oil or natural gas.
• Hydropower is a domestic source of energy, produced locally near where it is needed.
• Hydropower relies on the water cycle, which is driven by the sun, thus it's a renewable power source so long as the rain keeps falling on the dam catchment area.
• Hydropower is generally available as needed; engineers can control the flow of water through the turbines to produce electricity on demand.
• Hydropower is not only a cleaner source of energy than oil but is it more cost effective as well. The most efficient coal burning plants are only able to convert around 50 percent of their energy into electricity, whereas modern day hydro power turbines convert up to 90 percent of their energy into electricity.
• Hydropower can cost less than a penny per kWh (Kilowatt Hour) compared to fossil fuel power plants at around 2 to 3 cents per kWh. That may not seem like a big difference, but when factored out over a year and the millions of kW hours Americans burn, it adds up to a huge savings.
• Hydropower plants also have an added bonus as they create recreational opportunities for people as well as electricity. Hydro power dams provide not only water-based activities, but since much of the surrounding land is public they also encourage numerous other outdoor activities aside from boating, skiing, fishing, and hunting.
• Hydropower plants provide benefits in addition to clean electricity. Hydro power plants create reservoirs that offer a variety of recreational opportunities, notably fishing, swimming, and boating. Most hydro power installations are required to provide some public access to the reservoir to allow the public to take advantage of these opportunities. Other benefits may include water supply and flood control.
• Can help regulate river flows (flood prevention), stores water, creates recreational lake (though these uses often conflict).

B. Disadvantages:

• High investment costs
• Dependent on precipitation
• Sometimes messes up wildlife
• Loss of fish species
• Change in river or stream quality
• Cost for construction
• Hydroelectric power production require flooding of entire valleys and scenic areas.
• Disrupts natural seasonal changes in he river, and ecosystems can be destroyed.
• Ends flooding that help to clean out the silt in rivers, causing them to clog (Energy Laboratory).
• The silt that usually flows down to the Beaches and Estuaries is block by the dam.
• Studies show that the plant decay caused downstream of major dams produces as many greenhouse gasses as more conventional methods of producing electricity.
• Dams are expensive to build, and due to drought may become useless, or produce much less power than originally planned.
• A dam being built in Quebec may end up flooding a land area as large as Switzerland.
• Dams can break in a massive flash flood
• Construction costs of large-scale hydroelectric projects are high.
• Damming rivers causes changes in ecological cycles and surrounding landscapes; self-regulating ecosystems are changed into ones that must be managed.
• Sedimentation can progressively curtail a dam's ability to store water and generate energy.
• There are a limited number of feasible sites for large dams.
• Damming can cause loss of land suitable for agriculture and recreation.
• Drought can affect power production.
• Dams are vulnerable to natural forces. There is a high direct death rate from the failure of dams.
• River channels downstream from dams are more susceptible to erosion.
• A disadvantage of hydroelectric power stations is that it destroys wildlife and habitats of any creatures living in the area.
• Dams are extremely expensive to build and must be built to a very high standard.
• The high cost of dam construction means that they must operate for many decades to become profitable.
• The flooding of large areas of land means that the natural environment is destroyed.
• People living in villages and towns that are in the valley to be flooded, must move out. This means that they lose their farms and businesses. In some countries, people are forcibly removed so that hydro-power schemes can go ahead.
• The building of large dams can cause serious geological damage. For example, the building of the Hoover Dam in the USA triggered a number of earth quakes and has depressed the earth's surface at its location.
• Although modern planning and design of dams is good, in the past old dams have been known to be breached (the dam gives under the weight of water in the lake). This has led to deaths and flooding.
• Dams built blocking the progress of a river in one country usually means that the water supply from the same river in the following country is out of their control. This can lead to serious problems between neighboring countries.
• Building a large dam alters the natural water table level. For example, the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt has altered the level of the water table. This is slowly leading to damage of many of its ancient monuments as salts and destructive minerals are deposited in the stone work from 'rising damp' caused by the changing water table level.
• Hydro power dams can damage the surrounding environment and alter the quality of the water by creating low dissolved oxygen levels, which impacts fish and the surrounding ecosystems. They also take up a great deal of space and can impose on animal, plant, and even human environments.
• Fish populations can be impacted if fish cannot migrate upstream past impoundment dams to spawning grounds or if they cannot migrate downstream to the ocean. Upstream fish passage can be aided using fish ladders or elevators, or by trapping and hauling the fish upstream by truck. Downstream fish passage is aided by diverting fish from turbine intakes using screens or racks or even underwater lights and sounds, and by maintaining a minimum spill flow past the turbine.
• Hydro power can impact water quality and flow. Hydro power plants can cause low dissolved oxygen levels in the water, a problem that is harmful to riparian (riverbank) habitats and is addressed using various aeration techniques, which oxygenate the water. Maintaining minimum flows of water downstream of a hydro power installation is also critical for the survival of riparian habitats.
• Hydro power plants can be impacted by drought. When water is not available, the hydro power plants can't produce electricity.
• New hydro power facilities impact the local environment and may compete with other uses for the land. Those alternative uses may be more highly valued than electricity generation. Humans, flora, and fauna may lose their natural habitat. Local cultures and historical sites may be flooded. Some older hydro power facilities may have historic value, so renovations of these facilities must also be sensitive to such preservation concerns and to impacts on plant and animal life.
• By 2020, it is projected that the percentage of power obtained from hydro power dams will decrease to around four percent because no new plants are in the works, and because more money is being invested in other alternative energy sources such as solar power and wind power.
• Dams usually flood large river valleys, covering a lot of native habitat with water, displacing animals and sometimes people. In China more than one million people were moved when they built their big "Three Gorges" dam. Many archaeological sites are now unreachable under water and there is environmental damage along the banks of the many tributaries of the Yangtze River

In brief:

Hydro was the first commercial source of power of any size. The uses were understood right away, but there certainly are drawbacks.

They destroy farmland and alter the course of rivers. They must also be located at the discretion of the plant rather than our choosing. Much of our power that we use today is not even used constructively. There is a large portion of our energy that is used in transporting it across the country. The major disadvantage I would put against this form of power would be the land and energy consumed in transporting the power away from the plants. Grid loss is a major issue for energy users.

It is a renewable energy source. Unlike fossil fuels which will eventually run out, hydro power plants do not use up the energy source. It is also not polluting to the environment. They output power at a relatively reliable rate (compared to solar or wind, especially). On the other hand, they drastically affect all ecosystems upstream of the dam, and are much more environmentally destructive than nuclear power plants.

Advantages

• Inexhaustible fuel source
• Minimal environmental impact
• Viable source--relatively useful levels of energy production
• Can be used throughout the world

Disadvantages

• Smaller models depend on availability of fast flowing streams or rivers
• Run-of-the-River plants can impact the mobility of fish and other river life. NOTE: Building a fish ladder can lessen this negative aspect of hydroelectric power.

• Wave power is a renewable Energy Source.
• Wave Energy Is a Clean Fuel.
• Wave Energy is Environmentally Friendly - it doesn't destroy the environment.
• There is plenty of it.
• Tides/Waves are always predictable.
• you can always produce a significant amount of energy.
• you don't need fuel so it doesn't cost that much .
• Waves are free and will not run out so the cost is in building the power station.
• Wave power does not produce greenhouse gases.
• There are very few safety risks with wave power generation.

• Harnessing the power of it is difficult.
• it can cost a lot of money and requires further research.
• If the whole tidal/wave energy scheme does get popular real estate will be losing money for beach front houses since they will be using the beaches for the tidal/wind farms.
• It depends where you put it for the costs so not much good financially
• May interfere with mooring and anchorage lines commercial and sport fishing.
• Waves can be big or small so you may not always be able to generate electricity.
• You need to find a way of transporting the electricity from the sea onto the land.
• Not many people have tried to generate electricity this way yet so the equipment is expensive.
• It is believed that harnessing wave or tidal power will eventually slow the rotation speed of the planet. It is currently believed that we could cause as much as a full day of loss to our calenders every two thousand years by collecting enough energy from waves and tides.

Nuclear fusion is nonrenewable, because it relies on uranium being found and extracted from ores, and there is no way to replace this once it is used up. It is true you can make fissile material from nonfissile U-238, but then eventually all the U-238 would be used up, so that breeding process just enables more energy to be obtained from the uranium source, it does not make any more.

If fusion power becomes a reality this will make a huge energy resource available, namely the water in the oceans, and this would never be used up in millions of years, but strictly speaking it would still not be renewable. It requires hydrogen nuclei as an energy source, and once these have been used in fusion they are not naturally replenished. In fact, fusion power has a very high energy change, rendering it near impossible to reverse the process. A star, for example, is powered by nuclear fusion, and will eventually die out due to a lack of hydrogen.

Nuclear Fission is a non-renewable energy source, but it depends on your perspective. Uranium-235, the primary fuel for nuclear power, has an abundance of 0.7 percent in the Earth. An enrichment of 4% to 5% is required in order to achieve an effective fission reaction, and the half-life of uranium-235 is about 70 million years, with uranium-238 (with an abundance of 99.3%) having a half-life of about 447 billion years. As a result, it is unlikely that we will run out of uranium-235 in the near, mid, and distant future.

In addition, Plutonium-239, an effective alternate source of nuclear power, which can be formed from uranium-238, has a half-life of about 24,000 years.
Because there is no way of making more uranium, once it is used up it will not be replaced. If nuclear fusion becomes possible, using hydrogen isotopes, then there will be a vast new source of energy from the earth's water, but again it is using a fixed resource.

In my view the only truly renewable sources of energy are those which are provided by the sun on a daily basis.

• Biomass
• Nuclear fission
• Possibly geothermal

Well, if you want to be pedantic about it, so is solar, wind and tide energy. The sun will transition to red giant in a few billion years then (probably) become a white dwarf. No more sunlight. And even longer after that, as the universe is expanding, due to the law of entropy, everything will eventually be spread out thinly across space, and the energy levels will be constant everywhere. So if you want to be pedantic, EVERY source of alternative energy will run out eventually, but the person asking this question obviously wants to know what alternative energy sources are exhaustible in the timeframe of human existence, and the answer to that is biomass and nuclear (with the current technologies, the figures show we will run out of uranium in about 160-200+ years, but potential new technologies look to be able to extend our uranium supply almost indefinitely). And technically we can run out of (useable) biomass.

Realistically, we're never going to run out of biomass, though producing enough to satisfy fuel demands could be very difficult. Efficient use of current technology and (more important) fuel recycling means that we're unlikely to run out of nuclear fission fuel, either. We're never going to run out of nuclear fusion fuel.

Geothermal is tricky. We're never going to run out of geothermal energy to tap into (as that would require cooling of the earth's core, which won't happen on a human timescale), but individual places where geothermal energy is available can easily change, and as geothermal isn't portable, it is entirely possible for a given location to be unable to produce geothermal power at some point.

• Solar energy is considered a renewable source of energy because the sun's energy is continuous. (Note that the rest of this list are all forms of solar power.)
• Wind Power
• Water Power (Hydro-electricity from dammed rivers, tidal streams and ocean waves)
• Thermal Power from the earth (Geothermal: Using the earth's heat to generate electricity)
• Thermal Power from the ocean
• Biomass, the burning of plant material, is a renewable resource. Even though the burning puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it also prevents a much greater amount of methane being released by the decomposing vegetation, so it is rated as positive.
• Trees are renewable because we can replant them.

• Oil is a good example of a non-renewable resource. It is used to make gasoline and other fuels, as well as plastics, such as grocery bags. We are using billions of gallons of oil every year, but it takes millions of years to be replace. We are using up oil much much faster than it is being produced. Once we use up oil from the earth, it's gone. We can't wait millions of years for some more.
• Coal is non-renewable.
• Peat is non-renewable.
• Uranium is non-renewable.

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Most of the time the two terms are referring to sources of energy:

Renewable sources are sources of energy that can be reused or that will continue regardless of you using them: power from the Sun, power from waves, power from wind.

Nonrenewable sources are sources of energy that have a limited supply and will run out, and not be able to be used in the future: Oil, Coal, Gas.

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Renewable energy sources are wind, solar, and hydro-power, and biomass. They will never run out. Nonrenewable energy sources are coal, oil, and other fossil fuels. The similarities are that most of them have a relation with the Sun. A nonrenewable energy source and a renewable energy source are similar in the way some of them are used to transform energy (you cannot create energy, it can only be transformed from one energy form to another.) The similarities are few but there are many differences, most of the positives are on the renewable energy's side.

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When you use petrol, gas, coal... basically anything you burn to produce heat and then turn this energy into electricity of mechanical energy (a car engine) you are using a raw material that is not going to be replaced. In fact petrol, gas, and coal take million of years to be naturally produced.

When you are burning wood (from trees), the tree grows again... eventually if you let it do so. This energy can be "kind of renewable" as long as another tree grows as fast in order to replace the one you cut.

Alternate Energy Sources: Solar, Wind, Hydro, Biomass, etc.

There are many, but it depends a bit on what you mean by "alternate." Mostly, people mean sources other than fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas), and maybe nuclear fission as well. Personally I prefer the term "renewable" sources of energy because the meaning is more clear, and maybe some day in the future renewable energy sources will be our main source of power, and won't be "alternate" at all!

Here are a few:

Solar: Solar power or sun's energy can be used to make both electricity and fuel with solar panels. These panels take energy from sunlight and turn it into either electricity or they drive a chemical reaction to make a fuel (hydrogen gas for instance). More energy from the sun hits the earth's surface in one hour than ALL the energy used by people on the entire earth in one year!

Hydroelectric: By building a dam on a river, and only letting the water pass through a small passage, you can use the force of the moving water to spin a turbine to make electricity.

Geothermal: If you drill down deep enough into the surface of the earth, you will reach very hot rocks. You can inject cold water into this deep hole, and the rocks heat the water, turning it to steam. You can then use this steam to turn a turbine to make electricity.

Wind: Giant windmills spin to make electricity from the force of wind moving through the blades of the windmill.

Biomass: Many plants can be turned into chemical fuels that can be burned. Ethanol is the most common, and usually corn or sugar cane is grown to make ethanol. You can burn ethanol in many cars just like gasoline.

Waves and Tides: The movement of water due to crashing waves or rising and falling tides can be used to spin a submerged propeller or a turbine to make electricity

Fusion: A costly and somewhat dangerous resource is being developed which is known as fusion. This is the same energy which generates the sun's heat and energy. It fuses hydrogen atoms into helium atoms but is not yet cost effective and they have yet to make a self sustaining reaction.

Another view:

Alternate renewable sources of energy are those that can be harnessed naturally and repeatedly by humans without damaging the environment or adding to the possibility of global warming.

The main renewable sources of energy to generate electricity are:

1. hydropower (use of water from rivers, dams, tides and ocean waves)
2. wind energy (using wind turbines)
3. solar power (using the power of the sun to heat water or produce electricity)
4. geothermal (using the heat deep under the earth's crust)
5. ocean Thermal (using surface heat and deep cold water)
6. biofuel (producing ethanol from organic material like switch-grass, corn and sugar cane husks)

*Strictly speaking an energy source is not 'renewable' if you mean "can humanity restore it?", as it must with trees, for example.

Geothermal, for example, is self-renewing - the Earth is constantly giving off its heat to water which is close enough to the heat to be warmed by it. It is not diminished to any noticeable extent by our using it. It is possible to use a geothermal resource to capacity locally. One example is in the geothermal area of Rotorua, New Zealand, where too many thermal bores resulted in the decline of the geysers that were a tourist attraction. This has since been addressed by controls on the bores in the area, and the geysers are performing as before.

Heat or light from the sun, wind (turns turbines which produce electricity), and water (the power of the flow turns turbines which produce electricity).
wind, tidal, geothermal and hydroelectricity

Gasoline Oil Coal Petroleum Basically any natural resource that cannot be produced, re-grown, regenerated, or reused on a scale which can sustain its consumption rate.
Coal, oil.
oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium
Gasoline, precious gems, gold...
Oil and coal.
coal,minerals,oil,diesel,nuclear energy

sorry that's all i got!
Examples of nonrenewable resources would be coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel like uranium.

These fuels are nonrenewable because they once you burn them or use them they can't be used again.

Anything that's mined from the Earth.

In the field of energy, that includes:

• coal
• lignite
• oil
• natural gas
• shale oil

In the field of materials,

• sand and gravel
• gold
• diamonds
• iron ore
• bauxite

The only non-renewable resources are ones that cannot be replaced, or at least replenished as quickly as it would be consumed. Hardwoods would be an example, if you don't replant them. Generally this is applied to fossil fuels : coal, oil, and natural gas, which would take millions of years to replace, and not quickly enough to replace what is used.