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Appliances like television sets can also be powered by portable fuel cells. This is a 100-Watt portable Ballard® fuel cell demonstration unit powering a television and VCR combo

Honda Motor Company's hydrogen-fueled FCX fuel cell vehicle is now in the hands of customers. The FCX, powered by Ballard's latest generation Mark 902 fuel cell, seats four, has a range of 170 miles (270km) and can reach speeds of 93 mph (150km/h). Having made its commercial debut in December 2002, Honda is leasing five FCX vehicles to the City of Los Angeles and will market others by lease arrangement to customers in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Over the next two to three years, Honda plans to lease about 30 FCX cars in Japan and California.

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Think of them as big batteries, but ones that only operate when fuel—in this case, pure hydrogen—is supplied to them.

The sun delivers about 7000 times more energy than we currently consume globally. However, we cannot cover the whole surface of the Earth with solar energy collectors. How much of this energy can we collect? Will it be enough to replace fossil fuels?

Our global consumption of electricity in 2005 was 15,182 TWh/y (see The Little Green Handbook). However, 9,541 TWh/y of electricity was produced by fossil fuels and 2,555 TWh/y by nuclear power, or the total 12,096 TWh/y. Assuming the lowest solar potential and the lowest efficiency of solar cells we can calculate that we could produce 35 times more electricity than produced by fossil fuels and nuclear power. The additional advantage is that solar power is clean and last practically forever.

Even if we used only 1% of unused land area we could produce nearly 4 times more electricity than we produce using fossil fuels and nuclear power.

CostChief among the problems associated with fuel cells is how expensive they are. Many of the component pieces of a fuel cell are costly.

InfrastructureIn order for PEMFC vehicles to become a viable alternative for consumers, there must be a hydrogen generation and delivery infrastructure. This infrastructure might include pipelines, truck transport, fueling stations and hydrogen generation plants

Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years in some countries for cooking and heating.

How it works

Hot rocks underground heat water to produce steam. We drill holes down to the hot region, steam comes up, is purified and used to drive turbines, which drive electric generators.

By "biofuels" on this page, I mean fuels for vehicles, such as "biodiesel" and "bioethanol" - although you can also use the term "biofuel" to cover any kind of fuel made from living materials or their waste.

How it works Biofuels are made from two main sources: Growing crops such as corn, sugar cane, soya or rapeseed; or from palm oil Growing algae

Biofuels are made from two main sources: Growing crops such as corn, sugar cane, soya or rapeseed; or from palm oil Growing algae

Wind is simply air in motion. It is caused by the uneven heating of the Earth's surface by the sun. Because the Earth's surface is made of very different types of land and water, it absorbs the sun's heat at different rates. One example of this uneven heating can be found in the daily wind cycle.

The Daily Wind Cycle During the day, the air above the land heats up more quickly than the air over water. The warm air over the land expands and rises, and the heavier, cooler air rushes in to take its place, creating wind. At night, the winds are reversed because the air cools more rapidly over land than over water. In the same way, the atmospheric winds that circle the earth are created because the land near the Earth's equator is heated more by the sun than the land near the North and South Poles. Wind Energy for Electricity Generation Today, wind energy is mainly used to generate electricity. Wind is a renewable energy source because the wind will blow as long as the sun shines

Like old fashioned windmills, today’s wind machines (also called wind turbines) use blades to collect the wind’s kinetic energy. The wind flows over the blades creating lift, like the effect on airplane wings, which causes them to turn. The blades are connected to a drive shaft that turns an electric generator to produce electricity. With the new wind machines, there is still the problem of what to do when the wind isn't blowing. At those times, other types of power plants must be used to make electricity.

Presnell explained that wind speed and duration help in determining the size and frequency of ocean waves. Another factor is called "fetch," referring to the span of water over which a breeze blows, and the longer a fetch, the more energy a wave can build up.

1) Individual silicon based (most commonly) cells called photovoltaics (PV) make up the modern day solar panel. These PV cell clusters perform the task of converting incoming sunlight directly into electricity. 2) Wires attached to the panels transport the converted electricity to a piece of equipment called an inverter. The job of the inverter is to convert the solar generated Direct Current (DC) electricity into the type of power your home can use, which is called Alternating Current (AC). 3) After the electricity travels through the inverter, the AC electricity is then transported via wire to your breaker panel to meet your home’s electric demands. 4) The process doesn’t end there, though. There are times when your panels will generate more power than you consume and times when you aren’t generating enough electricity (night times and periods of low light). When your panels are not generating enough solar electricity, you will continue to get power from your local utility. However, when you’re generating a surplus of solar electricity, that excess clean energy will be “net metered” to your local utility grid and you may earn a credit on your power bill for that net metered electricity.

Solar energy is an infinitely renewable resource that uses the sun's rays to generate electricity for use in your home. By going solar, you can reduce your energy costs and lower your dependence on fossil fuels, thereby making your own contribution to a cleaner environment. Generally, the solar energy systems we use work as follows:

Tidal power, often referred to as tidal energy, is a type of hydropower that harnesses the energy of our ocean’s tides or other flowing waterways to produce power, usually in the form of electricity.  As sea levels rise and fall or the currents flow underwater a potential energy is created.  By using equipment such as tidal energy generators and underwater turbines in areas of high tidal movements, the kinetic motion of the ocean can be used to turn the turbines, thus producing electricity. 

Let’s not hide the fact that manufacturing solar panels requires resources, fossil fuels that release CO2 emissions and add to our carbon footprint. However, it’s been sHown in numerous studies that solar panel production releases nowhere near as much CO2 and other greenhouse gases as electric generated from coal, oil, natural gas, etc. (And you still need to produce the equipment to generate electricity from those sources as well.)

The wind turbine is a rotating machine that turns the kinetic energy of wind into mechanical energy. The energy can then be used by machines or converted into electricity and stored.

A wind turbine gathers energy from the wind through the mechanical rotation of its blades. This is mechanically generated energy from kinetic energy that is then turned into electrical energy.

The sun transmits energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. When this radiation is absorbed by the solar cells, a chemical reaction occurs, causing rapid electron movement. Because of the way the cells are manufactured with layers of material with differing atomic structures, the electrons are forced to move in one direction, creating direct current, or DC. It then flows into an inverter which converts the DC into alternating current, or AC, to be usable in your home or business.

kilowatt system will replace around 2.5 tonnes of greenhouse gases, possibly more. It depends on what your annual output is, and what the local mix of power sources is in your province/state/country.