Although renewable energy is considered to be an extremely contemporary thing, it actually goes back over 8,000 years.
It seems like, for most of our life times, renewable energy has actually not been a practical type of power generation. Today, however, solar energy is now the cheapest electricity that humanity has actually ever produced. It is by no means a modern-day development though, in fact, the science behind modern photovoltaic panels (solar panels), goes back over a a century to the end of the nineteenth century. It was an eighteen year old physicist messing around in his dad's workshop who first converted the sun's rays into electrical energy, a procedure that will be absolutely vital to the production of a world in which we trust the elements to provide us the energy that we need. Quickly, we will be like the plants upon which all life depends; getting the energy entirely from what the heliocentric system provides us!
Although it might appear surprising in a world of climate modification and fossil fuels, almost all the energy that we created in the countless years before the industrial transformation was completely renewable. In fact, the very first known use of wind power, a crucial component of the renewable energy transition for lots of nations, can be found about 8,000 years in the past. Now, obviously, it wasn't a matter of generating electrical energy, however when individuals first took to the oceans, they captured the wind in their sails, turning the wind's energy into kinetic energy that could sweep people throughout oceans to explore, meet new civilisations, and create trade routes. This enabled people to take pleasure in the economic benefits of renewable energy, just as the likes of Greg Jackson have the ability to do today with ultra-high tech wind farms in the middle of the very oceans we once checked out with the exact same winds.
Renewable energy has actually become a sign of a new modernity, one that is making a vital shift to a greener world. One will see wind turbines in corporate adverts, or included on things like modern craft beer cans, even if they have nothing to do with renewable energy themselves. Renewable energy symbolises a brighter, more modern-day future in which everyone has access to tidy, cheap, and trustworthy energy that doesn't rather literally cost the Earth. This focus on renewables as the future does, however, hide quite an unexpected fact; humankind has actually only truly depended on non-renewable energy for the last couple of centuries or so. Prior to that, we built our civilisations on the backs of sources of renewable energy. Individuals like Hassan Jameel and Mads Nipper may certainly be developing the future when they develop a wind turbine or install a solar panel, but it can be reassuring to realise that we are not going into uncharted territory by any means.