Essay --

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has a population of nearly 9.2 million people in 2012 (World Bank) and it produces over 48,951,000,000 kWh. (NationMaster.com). It has the world’s sixth largest proven oil reserves and the fifth largest natural gas reserves. However, despite all this, UAE’s methods of generating electricity are going to soon come to an end. There are many ways to generate electricity and they each have their advantages and disadvantages. The major way to generate electricity is probably through fossil fuel plants. However this is not a renewable energy source. There are many other ways that countries use to generate electricity such as Solar energy, wind energy, wave energy, and magnetic energy. In the UAE, natural gas and oil are used to generate electricity. Natural gas is a fossil fuel formed when layers of buried plants and animals are exposed to intense heat and pressure over thousands of years. The energy that the plants and animals originally obtained from the sun is stored in the form of carbon in natural gas. Natural gas is combusted to generate electricity, enabling this stored energy to be transformed into usable power. It is a non-renewable resource and it is running out. The process works by extracting the natural gases from the ground, and then they treat it. The gas is treated at gas plants to remove impurities such as hydrogen sulfide, helium, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and moisture. It then gets transported through pipelines from gas plants to power plants. They then use several methods to convert gas to electricity. A more common approach is to burn the gas in a combustion turbine to generate electricity. Oil is another way that the UAE is generating electricity. Oil is found in undergrou... ...ing electricity and do not produce any pollution in the process. It is a reliable energy source. This is because the sun will always rise and set every day, although clouds are unpredictable we can still generate a bit of energy every day. It is also a secure solution and no one will be able to steal it. Economically solar powers help save a lot of money. It also provides job opportunities. It creates two to three times more jobs than using natural gas. There are also some disadvantages of using solar energy. The biggest disadvantage of using solar energy would probably be the fact that the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day. When the sun goes down there is no sun and therefore the PV panels will stop producing electricity. This would mean that along with solar panels another energy source must be used to generate electricity when there is no sun light available.