Using fossil fuels has driven the world of the edge-- keep reading to find out why that is an extremely recent development.

Although many individuals would envision that we have actually been burning nonrenewable fuel sources considering that the start of civilisation, non-renewable sources of energy only truly came about throughout the commercial transformation just over two hundred years earlier. Even the most state-of-the-art renewables are just as old. Around the time of the commercial revolution a 19-year-old French physicist developed the world's solar battery whilst experimenting in his father's lab, transforming sunlight into electricity. Today, solar is the most inexpensive electrical energy that humankind 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 writing this history, one that begins not in the 21st century, but lots of centuries previously.

One can easily be excused for imaging that non-renewable energy simply need to have been the basis for all of humankind's production of power throughout our history. The Earth has actually been subjected to substantial changes because of the quantity of nonrenewable fuel sources that have been burnt throughout human history. Nevertheless, that is altering, and a new period 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 believe, this is not necessarily a modern-day development; in fact, for more than 2 millennia, we have actually harvested the power of the aspects to develop energy, and the technology for producing energy from solar is as old as the combustion engine; in almost all ways, it is a more natural mode of energy production than burning nonrenewable fuel sources.

Although this may sound odd, the sources of renewable energy that we would probably identify today in fact date back over four thousand years. Wind is a significant cornerstone of numerous nations' plan to turn their energy grids green, particularly in nations that do not have the gift of year-round sunshine. The very 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, checking out the world around us and trading with other civilisations. A couple of millennia later, the very first recognized examples of hydropower sprang up, 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 very first account of solar energy too; legend has it that a hero utilized a series of mirrors to burn an invading fleet, focusing the power of the sun to produce directed heat, and comparable devices were utilized to light torches or fires in great buildings.