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Advantages: Geothermal energy cost is extremely low compared to many other energy sources. It has low pollution compared to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Geothermal energy is a renewable energy source. Almost no environmental impact when using geothermal heat from nuclear decay. Geothermal heat pump systems can reduce your energy use storing heat from the summer/sun and makes use of it in the night and winter. Low maintenance systems.

Disadvantages: The most important disadvantage is absolutely the geological problem.  The heat source is mostly close to volcanic activity of some sort. Chemicals are byproducts of the production electricity with hot ground water. Some geothermal plants use a lot of water and it needs to go somewhere its after use. Some of the poluting chemicals in that water and steam are sulfur, mercury, hydrogen sulfide, arsenic, ammonia. Earth is a changing creature.  A drilled hole in the ground could supply thousands of homes heat and one earthquake could change that in a second.  It can also change gradually over time. Location, location, location.  That is certainly true of geothermal energy.  It cannot be transported over vast distances.  If used to heat up houses or for hot tap water it is only the quality of the pipe that delivers the water that determines how far it can go and if it will be of any use when it arrives. If the heat is used for electrical production it helps to have plants close so the energy loss is not too great. 

Corrosion is a big problem.  Composition of the chemicals can vary but it is always a problem.  It is among other the reason they need to heat up clean water to use and do not use it directly in to heating of houses.  In cases it has been used directly it causes pipes to corrode. In nuclear heating rock the rock cools down over few decades and hundreds of years are needed to get initial heating back.  Power stations of that sort are therefore not considered as profitable. Geothermal Heat pump systems do have high installation cost. Some areas run out of water or run low on ground water during seasonal dry spells. Less water means less heat and less energy to produce. Some drilling sites are too hot to handle.  Yea. Drillers have actually tried and tried some holes and they just can’t get the needed equipment in because the holes shoot it out like guns.   With workers running to stay alive while steel rains down on them. 

Biofuels are made with biomass (biological material from living or recently living organisms) there are many kinds, for example biodiesel involves growing crops that contain large amounts of natural oil, these plants then go through a refining process and subsequently are mixed in with regular diesel to power cars. Bio petrol is made in a similar way; plants are refined to make a natural ethanol.

Tidal energy is produced by the surge of ocean waters during the rise and fall of tides.

The cost of setting up a tidal power station can be very high, although once in place the operating costs are low. As an example of the cost of setting up, a proposed 8000 MW tidal power plant and barrage system on the Severn Estuary in the UK has been estimated to cost US$15 billion, while another in the San Bernadino strait which would produce 2,200 MW as a tidal fence in the Philippines will cost an estimated US$3 billion.

Resources of geothermal energy range from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the Earth's surface, and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma.

Hot water near the surface of Earth can be used directly for heat.

Wells can be drilled into underground reservoirs for the generation of electricity. Some geothermal power plants use the steam from a reservoir to power a turbine/generator, while others use the hot water to boil a working fluid that vaporizes and then turns a turbine.

The fuel cell will compete with many other energy­ conversion devices, including the gas turbine in your city's power plant, the gasoline engine in your car and the battery in your laptop. Combustion engines like the turbine and the gasoline engine burn fuels and use the pressure created by the expansion of the gases to do mechanical work. Batteries convert chemical energy back into electrical energy when needed. Fuel cells should do both tasks more efficiently.

The coal powder mixes with hot air, which helps the coal burn more efficiently, and the mixture moves to the furnace. The burning coal heats water in a boiler, creating steam. Steam released from the boiler powers an engine called a turbine, transforming heat energy from burning coal into mechanical energy that spins the turbine engine. The spinning turbine is used to power a generator, a machine that turns mechanical energy into electric energy. This happens when magnets inside a copper coil in the generator spin.

Electricity-generating plants send out electricity using a transformer, which increases the voltage of the electricity based on the amount required and the distance it must travel. Voltages are often as high as 500,000 volts at this point.  Electricity flows along transmission lines to substation transformers. These transformers reduce the voltage for use in the local areas to be served.  From the substation transformers, electricity travels along distribution lines, which can be either above or below the ground, to cities and towns. Transformers once again reduce the voltage—this time to about 120 to 140 volts—for safe use inside homes and businesses. The delivery process is instantaneous. By the time you have flipped a switch to turn on a light, electricity has been delivered.

The world will have enough wind turbines to generate more than 300 gigawatts of power - the equivalent of 114 nuclear power plants

Fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), known as biodiesel, are products of plant or animal origin whose composition and properties are defined by the European Union in standard EN 14214. There is an exception for the iodine value for Spain, which has been established as 140 rather than the 120 proposed by standard EN 14214.

In January 2012 the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which provided power to 1.4 million homes in Southern California

SCE went from having 50 percent of its energy production carbon-free in 2011 to 30 percent in 2012,

If solar panels are manufactured using electricity from coal-burning plants, they indirectly emit greenhouse gas emissions. That makes them less clean than a panel that’s manufactured using renewable energy.

hexafluoride

In 2011, U.S. geothermal power plants produced about 17 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or 0.4% of total U.S. electricity generation.

They may also reduce the amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels and therefore reduce the amount of air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, and water use of fossil fuel power plants.

Modern wind turbines are very large machines, and some people do not like their visual impact on the landscape. A few wind turbines have caught on fire, and some have leaked lubricating fluids, though this is relatively rare. Some people do not like the sound that wind turbine blades make. Some types of wind turbines and wind projects cause bird and bat deaths. These deaths may contribute to declines in species that are also being affected by other human-related impacts. Many birds are killed from collisions with vehicles and buildings, by house cats and hunters, and by pesticides. Their natural habitats may be altered or destroyed by human development and by the changes in the climate that most scientists believe are caused by greenhouse gases emissions from human activities (which wind energy use can help reduce).

Making the metals and other materials in wind turbines and the concrete for their foundations requires the use of energy, which may be from fossil fuels.

The construction phase involves the construction of the geothermal field(s), infrastructure, power plants, and transmission lines.

Transmission lines, Electric power transmission or "high voltage electric transmission" is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating Geothermal plants. Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_po… 2 years ago

bounadaries and faults are cracks in the Earth’s crust where magma rises near or to the surface. Geothermal plants take advantage of this fact using water heated by this volcanic activity to produce electric power.

The best part is that it is clean energy. There is no way it can produce pollution that can harm the environment

It depends what you mean by "solar energy." Humans have always used solar energy in some sense: to warm themselves, to grow food, etc. However, I'm assuming that's not really what you mean (although it is important to realize that all energy on earth, with the exception of nuclear fission and geothermal, is ultimately driven by the sun's energy -- even fossil fuels, which after all were plants that grew with sunlight millions of years ago). Solar power has been used directly in various forms for over 100 years.