| |
Portal:Energy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Energy Portal
 |
Welcome to Wikipedia's energy portal, your gateway to the subject of energy and its effect on the world around us.
|
Energy is most often used in the context of energy resources, their development, consumption, depletion, and conservation. Since economic activities such as manufacturing and transportation can be energy intensive, energy efficiency, energy dependence, energy security and price are key concerns. Increased awareness of the effects of global warming has led to international debate and action for the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions.
In the context of natural science, energy can take several different forms: thermal, chemical, electrical, radiant, nuclear, etc. These are often grouped as being either kinetic energy or potential energy. Many of these forms can be readily transformed into another with the help of a device; from chemical energy to electrical energy using a battery, for example. Most of our available energy comes from the sun. The enormous potential for energy is expressed by the famous equation E = mc2.
The concepts of energy and its transformations are useful in explaining natural processes. Meteorological phenomena like wind, rain, lightning and tornadoes all result from energy transformations brought about by solar energy on the planet. Life itself is critically dependent on biological energy transformations; organic chemical bonds are constantly broken and made to make the exchange and transformation of energy possible. Read more...
Refresh page contents
edit watch
Selected article
Wind power in Texas consists of many wind farms with a total installed nameplate capacity of some 7,116 megawatts (MW) from over 40 different projects, at the end of 2008. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state, followed by Iowa with 2,790 MW. Wind energy accounts for 3.3% of all the energy used in the state and is growing, while large portions of wind energy produced in Texas also goes to markets in other states.
Several forces are working to the advantage of wind power in Texas: the wind resource in many areas of the state is very large, large projects are relatively easy to site, and the market price for electricity is relatively high because it is set by natural gas prices. The wind power industry is also creating many jobs and farmers may earn extra income by leasing their land to wind developers.
The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center (735 MW) in Taylor and Nolan counties is the world's largest wind farm. But the Roscoe Wind Farm and Sherbino Wind Farm are under construction and when completed will be slightly larger than Horse Hollow. Other large wind farms in Texas include: the Sweetwater Wind Farm, Buffalo Gap Wind Farm, King Mountain Wind Farm, Desert Sky Wind Farm, Wildorado Wind Ranch, and the Brazos Wind Farm. Read more...
edit watch
Selected picture
- The concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has increased from about 280 parts per million to about 380 ppm since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That's an increase of 35.71%. The estimated population of the world in 1750 was 791 Million people. The estimated population of the world on June 30th, 2007 was 6.6 Billion people. That's an increase of 734.39%.?
- In the 1990s Bougainville conflict, islanders cut off from oil supplies due to a blockade used coconut oil to fuel their vehicles?
edit watch
Selected biography
James Clerk Maxwell ( 13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist. His most significant achievement was formulating a set of equations – eponymously named Maxwell's equations – that for the first time expressed the basic laws of electricity and magnetism in a unified fashion. Maxwell's contributions to physics are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Maxwell studied natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and mental philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, before graduating in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where he would conduct much of his career. He built on Michael Faraday's work on magnetic induction, using elements of geometry and algebra Maxwell to demonstrate that electric and magnetic fields travel through space, in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light. Finally, in 1861, Maxwell proposed that light consisted of undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. In the same year he was elected to the Royal Society.
In 1864, Maxwell presented what are now known as Maxwell's equations to the Royal Society. These collectively describe the behaviour of both the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter. Read more...
- July 2, 2009: Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano was elected as Director General for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
- June 30, 2009: French official Hélène Pelosse was elected as the Interim Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency.
- June 30, 2009: Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, oil minister of Qatar, was elected as the chairman of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.
- June 29, 2009: The Preparatory Commission for the International Renewable Energy Agency designated the headquarters of the organization to Abu Dhabi, Masdar City, while an innovation and technology center will be located in Bonn, and an office for liaising with the United Nations and other international institutions in Vienna.
- March 23, 2009: Suncor Energy announced merger with Petro-Canada creating the largest oil company in Canada.
- February 22, 2009: Vietnam opened its first oil refinery in Dung Quat.
- February 18, 2009: The Sakhalin-II LNG plant was inaugurated on the Sakhalin Island, Russia.
- February 2, 2009: The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) reported that in 2008 the world capacity of installed wind turbines grew 28.8% to reach 120.8 GW.
- January 31, 2009: Golar Spirit became the first floating storage and regasification vessel, which regasified LNG on board.
- "Without radical international measures to reduce carbon emissions within the next 10 to 15 years, there is compelling evidence to suggest we might lose the chance to control temperature rises. Failure to act will make an increase of between 2 and 5 degrees [3.6 - 9°F] in average temperatures almost inevitable." – Tony Blair, 2006
- "The question is not whether climate change is happening or not, but whether, in the face of this emergency, we ourselves can change fast enough." – Kofi Annan, 2006
- "I promise you a day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they will ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, 'What in God's name were they doing? Didn't they see the evidence?' Or, they may look back and say 'How did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?'" – Al Gore, 2007, on global warming.
edit watch
Related portals
WikiProjects connected with energy:
Other WikiProjects that may be of interest:
Puzzled by energy?
Can't answer your question?
Don't understand the answer?
For further ideas, to leave a comment, or to learn how you can help improve and update this portal, see the talk page.
edit watch
Associated Wikimedia
|
|
|
