Green Energy. That is today's large push and "the way to the future". Although a large portion of our energy is produced from fossil fuels, a large amount of resources are being invested in renewable energy sources. There are two main sources of renewable energy that are dependent on environmental parameters; these energy sources are solar and wind energy. Wind energy is growing 20% annually and is widely used in the Asia, Europe, and the United States. Many other countries use wind power on a commercial basis. Solar energy is rapidly growing as well. With new technology being developed continuously for both solar and wind energy the potential for renewable energy grows as well.
. There is a need to pinpoint geographic locations where it would be profitable to establish a renewable energy infrastructure first before this transition into renewable energy become feasible. Many countries possess the correct area for renewable energy but have not had those areas outline just yet. Brazil is a country that is developing renewable energy infrastructure. It's large coastline and large input of solar radiative energy make it a well situated area for renewable energy.
Methods Used
Open Energy Information (OpenEI) is a website for decision makers and researchers where energy data is available on a county basis. Wind and solar energy for Brazil was downloaded at a 40 km resolution for this analysis from the OpenEI database. The wind energy data came formatted in units of Watts per meter squared. The solar energy data used was formatted in units average Kilowatt hours per m squared per day. This needed to be converted to watts per meter squared. Once converted to the correct units, an assumption that 50% of the area will be used by infrastructure or unusable and was accounted for.
Areas that produced over 300 watts per meter squared were deemed beneficial to build renewable energy infrastructure for Brazil. These areas are shown below.
Results
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Conclusions
Brazil has a large amount of area that can be used for solar energy, but a large part of that area is the Amazon rain forest. Brazil also has a considerable amount of area that is beneficial to build wind farms, a lot of the area beneficial for wind lie near the coast. This makes sense because off-shore winds can be very powerful.
Compared to Brazil's total energy consumption, there will not be enough energy produced if the country were to just rely on renewable energy. This is not to say that statement will still hold true with the development of new and better technology. These values for energy are grossly oversimplificated and may not be entirely accurate as well.
