Sustainable Energy: Renewables & a Local LIC Scheme
Two Families of Energy
Almost every form of energy used today fits into one of two families. Renewable energy comes from sources that replenish naturally and quickly — sunlight, wind, flowing water, tides, geothermal heat and biomass. Non-renewable energy comes from sources that take millions of years to form and cannot be replaced on a human timescale — coal, oil, natural gas and the uranium used in nuclear plants. The world’s energy mix is gradually shifting from non-renewable to renewable sources, but the change is uneven and contested.
Seven main renewables — biomass, wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, wave and solar — replenish naturally. Non-renewables include coal, oil and natural gas (fossil fuels) and uranium for nuclear power. Around 30% of world electricity now comes from renewables, up from under 20% in 2010.
Renewable Energy Sources
Each renewable source has its own strengths and weaknesses:
- Wind: grows fastest where wind speeds are reliable. Turbines work well off coastlines (the UK’s North Sea farms) but face local opposition over views and noise.
- Solar: photovoltaic panels generate electricity from sunlight. Costs fell over 80% in the last decade, making solar the cheapest new electricity in many countries. India and China lead in installed capacity.
- Hydro: dams trap river water and release it through turbines. Reliable but disrupts ecosystems and can displace communities (e.g. China’s Three Gorges Dam).
- Tidal and wave: exploit the rise and fall of the sea or breaking waves. Predictable but expensive to engineer.
- Geothermal: taps underground heat. Iceland gets around 65% of its primary energy this way; the UK has very limited capacity.
- Biomass: burning wood, crops or organic waste. Counted as renewable if regrown, but can compete with food production and produces local air pollution.
Non-Renewable Energy Sources
Fossil fuels still supply over half of global energy. Coal remains the leading source of electricity in China and India because it is cheap and abundant, despite the highest carbon emissions per unit. Oil dominates transport — petrol, diesel and aviation fuel — though electric vehicles are growing fast. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, used widely for heating and electricity. Nuclear from uranium produces low-carbon electricity but raises concerns over waste storage, accidents (Chernobyl 1986, Fukushima 2011) and the high cost of building new plants.
Oil, gas and coal stay popular for several reasons. They have very high energy density (a litre of diesel carries enormous power for its size), the infrastructure for extracting, refining and burning them is already built, and they are reliable on demand — unlike wind or solar, you can turn them on whenever you need power. Replacing them takes both time and trillions of dollars in new grids, batteries and electric transport. Even with rapid renewable growth, fossil fuels are likely to play a role for decades.
A Local Renewable Scheme: Chambamontera, Peru
For the AQA case study of a local renewable scheme in an LIC or NEE, this lesson uses the Chambamontera micro-hydro scheme in northern Peru, completed in 2010. Around 60 mountainous farming villages in this region had no grid electricity. Micro-hydro uses a stream’s natural fall to spin a small turbine. The scheme provides:
- Power for around 60 households in a community with annual income of just £700–1,400 per family.
- A 20-year lifespan with low running costs, making it affordable in the long term.
- Local ownership and maintenance — villagers were trained by the NGO Practical Action to run and repair the system, building local skills.
- Environmental sustainability — uses river flow, not stored water, so there is no large reservoir flooding farmland or displacing people.
Chambamontera (Peru) cost around £43,000 funded mainly by Practical Action and the Peruvian government. It pays for itself by lifting incomes — villagers can refrigerate produce, charge tools and study after dark, raising productivity and quality of life.
Why Chambamontera Reduces Poverty
Electricity is more than a convenience — it is a poverty trap broken. Before the scheme, families used candles and kerosene (expensive, polluting and a fire risk). Children could not study after dark. Coffee farmers had to sell beans wet and at low prices because they could not refrigerate or grind them locally. After the scheme:
- Education improved as schools and homes had reliable lighting for evening study.
- Health improved as kerosene fumes (a major cause of respiratory illness) disappeared from homes.
- Income rose — farmers could process coffee on-site and sell at higher prices, reducing reliance on middlemen.
- Skills grew as villagers learned to maintain the turbine, opening jobs in nearby valleys.
Big national grids are costly to build across mountains and isolated valleys. Small, local schemes — often called ‘intermediate technology’ or ‘appropriate technology’ — match the resources and needs of the community. They are cheaper, easier to repair locally and fit the geography. Schemes like Chambamontera show how renewable energy can leapfrog the fossil-fuel stage of development entirely, much as mobile phones leapfrogged landlines in many African countries.
Conclusion: A Sustainable Future
Across the last six lessons you have followed the UK from declining factories to a global service economy, looked at where food, water and energy come from, and seen the threat of insecurity at world scale. Chambamontera shows that the response can be local: a small turbine in a Peruvian valley brings electricity, jobs and dignity. The bigger picture — whether through North Sea wind farms, Indian solar parks, German heat pumps or Peruvian micro-hydro — is the same. Sustainable resource management is the central project of 21st-century geography.