For thousands of years, solar, wind, and biomass (plant) energy met human needs. Today, we use much more energy than ever before, most of which comes from burning fossil fuels. Once we use up these fossil fuels, they’re gone forever. Even if we had enough fossil fuels to meet our energy needs of the future, burning them produces emissions that are damaging our environment with greenhouse gases, climate change, and acid rain. The nation and the world have to become more energy efficient and use cleaner, renewable energy sources.

In this country, we use more energy per person than every other country in the world. Even other wealthy nations like Japan, Germany, and England use much less energy per person than the U.S. This isn’t necessary – we know how to meet our needs for transportation, heating, and lighting using much less energy than we do today. Energy efficiency can really cut our energy use, make our fossil fuels last longer, protect the environment, and help the economy.

There are thousands of homes and businesses using renewable energy throughout Michigan. Many of them have been doing so for more than twenty years. Solar energy provides them with heat, hot water, and/or electricity. Wind energy is providing electricity to hundreds of homes. Energy we get from the sun, wind, and plants is energy we don’t need from fossil fuels. Renewable energy isn’t just something for the future, it’s here today, meeting our daily needs.

There is a lot you can do to make the energy situation better, help create a healthy economy, save money, and reduce pollution.  These include reducing energy use, using renewable energies, buying green power and urging your elected representatives to support energy efficiency and renewable energy. The future
is up to us.