Building a Global Low-Carbon Society Based on Hybrid Use of Natural Clean Energy

Abstract

It is well-known that the extensive emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as CO₂ gas and freon gas during a long period after the industrial revolution is a fundamental reason causing the global warming and the climate change on our globe. The average temperature during an entire year at the surface of the globe has been elevated about 1 °C comparing the corresponding temperature before the industrial revolution. Thus, mitigation or reduction of the global warming is one of the most important subjects to keep the continuous development of humankind. In such a circumstance, various kinds of natural energies such as the wind energy, the solar energy, and the water energy have been focused as energy resources to realize the low-carbon society, since these energy resources are clean without emission of any greenhouse gases. In order to use these natural energies as energy resources, the wide variety of the technologies have been developed extensively nowadays. Considering this trend, the authors have attempted to develop new types of power generation systems for the wind energy and the water energy in this work. These new technologies can be effectively combined with solar energy plants and conventional water plants depending on the respective local conditions. In other words, the hybrid use of natural clean energies appropriate to the individual location such as the mountainside, the urban area, and the coast/bay area provides us the distinct advantage to realize the low-carbon society without any emission of the greenhouse gas. In addition, the overall concept to realize the low-carbon society based on these natural energies is finally indicated together with some remaining subjects to be solved in the future.