Renewable energy is not some marvel of contemporary technology, it is an ancient thing that assisted to develop human civilisation.

One can easily be excused for imaging that non-renewable energy just need to have been the basis for all of humankind's production of power throughout our history. The Earth has actually been subjected to substantial changes because of the quantity of fossil fuels that have actually been burnt throughout human history. However, that is altering, and a new period of renewable energy, pushed forward by individuals like the founder of the hedge fund with a stake in Energias de Portugal and the co-founder of Octopus Energy's parent company, is starting to emerge. In contrast to what one may believe, this is not necessarily a modern-day development; in fact, for more than 2 millennia, we have actually harvested the power of the components to create energy, and the innovation for producing energy from solar power is as ancient as the combustion engine; in almost all ways, it is a more natural mode of energy production than burning nonrenewable fuel sources.

Although this might sound unusual, the sources of renewable energy that we would most likely identify today in fact date back over 4 thousand years. Wind is a major cornerstone of lots of countries' strategy to turn their energy grids green, particularly in countries that do not have the gift of year-round sunlight. The very first example of people harnessing the energy of the wind was around 4,000 years earlier, when we caught it in our sails transformed it into kinetic energy that might carry us across the seas, checking out the world around us and trading with other civilisations. A number of millennia later on, the first known examples of hydropower emerged, whereby rivers and streams powered waterwheels and other devices that might cut stone or grind grains. It was around the same time that we find the very first account of solar energy as well; legend has it that a hero used a series of mirrors to burn an attacking fleet, focusing the power of the sun to produce directed heat, and similar contraptions were utilized to light torches or fires in excellent buildings.

Although lots of people would imagine that we have been burning nonrenewable fuel sources since the start of civilisation, non-renewable sources of energy only truly happened during the industrial transformation just over 2 hundred years ago. Even the most modern renewables are just as old. Around the time of the commercial revolution a 19-year-old French physicist produced the world's solar battery whilst exploring in his father's laboratory, transforming sunshine into electricity. Today, solar is the most affordable electrical energy that mankind has ever produced, and individuals like the CEO of Ecotricity's institutional shareholders are at the leading edge of utilizing both the environmental and economic benefits of renewable energy to continue writing this history, one that begins not in the 21st century, however lots of centuries before.