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How energy use has changed over time

People rely on energy to do a lot of things. Imagine toasting a marshmallow around a fire with your family and friends. You are using fire as a source of energy to prepare your food.

Fire was the first of many energy sources discovered by human beings in the Stone Age, many moons ago. And for a very long time, fire was used by people to keep themselves warm, to cook food and as light in the darkness.

Since fire was discovered, people have found more ways of making energy and using it to make life easier.

Ancient Greeks and Romans are believed to have been the first ever to use and burn coal as fuel. It wasn’t until the early 1700s that the burning of coal to power steam engines, for example, became well known.

For thousands of years, people have used wind energy to move from place to place. In the 1800s, the wind-powered clipper ship was developed in the United States and, in those times, clippers were the fastest sailing vessels ever made.

But soon after that people found that steam could make ships go faster than the wind could. Heating water makes steam, which is what steam engines use to move.

Energy and the environment: renewable and non-renewable energy

Most fossil fuels pollute and harm the environment anyway, because they produce huge amounts of a gas called carbon dioxide. There is also a limited supply of fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide can be trapped in the atmosphere and this leads to climate change. Right now, most of the energy used to run cars and factories, or to heat and cool our buildings, is fossil-fuel energy.

Fossil fuels are non-renewable energy resources. What this means is that when coal is burnt, you cannot reverse the process. Once these energy sources are used up, they are gone forever.

Much of the world relies on nonrenewable energy to power their cars, heat their homes and power their devices, such as phones and computers.

Renewable energy sources, like the name suggests, can be replenished.

Energy from the sun, water and wind are some of the renewable natural resources that can save the environment from pollutants such as coal and oil.