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In today’s society energy conservation is sometimes looked at as a thing of the future, but at the rate that our planet is changing it should be something that needs to start happening now. Conserving energy is something that is and will continue to be beneficial to our environment because it can give us longer lasting resources, which can provide things such as fuel and electricity to keep everything on our planet in full swing without being harmful to our environment.

There are two main types of energy resources: Renewable and Nonrenewable. Renewable resources are things like wind power, solar energy, biomass fermentation, and hydropower, all of which use something that mother nature provides for us that we will not run out of any time soon and ultimately have no negative effects on the environment. Nonrenewable resources are things like coal, oil, and natural gas; all of which our planet will run out of eventually, and all of which have negative effects on the environment such as acid deposition and oil spills. Solar energy is one of the more widely used and more popular of the renewable resources used to conserve energy. The sun produces a large amount of energy, and most of it evaporates into space. Only a small amount is radiated to Earth. Solar energy is different from nonrenewable resources because it is always available; we will only run out of solar energy if the sun burns out. To make solar energy useful, we must collect it. In active solar heating, a system of putting the sun’s energy to use, a series of collection devices mounted on a roof or in a field are used to gather solar energy. (Nov 2007)

There are many needs that can be fulfilled by solar energy. Solar domestic water heating can even provide a consumer’s hot water needs all year. Active solar energy is not used for space heating as commonly as it is used for heating water, but it may become more important when diminishing supplies of fossil fuels force gas...