Comenius Project 2009-2010

Lahr second year meeting

-Renewable energies and their importance.

Climate change

The climate change is the modification of the climate in respect to the climate history in a global or a regional scale.

Global warming is the increase of temperature in the Earth, that does that the ice shrinks doing that the sea level rises. The causes are mainly gas pollution, and also the volcanoes and the tectonic plates.

When the light of sun arrives at the Earth, this reflects it, but later the light is returned by the atmosphere for the gases.

Climate change impacts

The climate change produces many problems around the world:

- Increase of the temperatures

- Shrink of the glaciers

- Rise of the sea level

Climate change solutions

To reduce the pollution, the most important solutions are:- Reduce emissions of contaminant gases- Use renewable energies

Renewable energies

Renewable energies don’t pollute and they are neverending because they are present in the nature.

The most used are:

• Solar energy

• Wind power

• Hidroelectricity

• Geothermal energy

Renewable energies in Europe

Europe is the leading world power in the development and the implementation of renewable energies, but only Deutschland is in track to achieve the focus set in the Kyoto protocol.

Renewable energies in Tarragona

Tarragona has got a lot of wind farms and they produce the 10,7% supplied energy in Spain. It has got wind farms in all over Tarragona, for example Tortosa.

Solar energy

This energy is obtained by solar panels, which generates energy with the light of the sun.

Wind power

Through wind turbines, the wind is converted into electricity. Normally, there are grouped, forming wind farms.

The problem with this energy is that the turbines cause a visual impact, and they kill animals like birds or bats.

Hidroelectricity

The power generated by the water currents is converted into electricity through turbines. This system takes advantage of the potential and the kinetic energy.

Geothermal energy

This power is extracted from heat stored in the Earth.

Geothermal plants have capacity to generate about 10 gigawatts.

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol that tries to fight the global warming.

- Participation in the Kyoto Protocol, in June 2009. The green countries are the ones that have signed and ratified the treaty, the grey ones are not yet decided and the red ones haven’t got intention to ratify.