Hey guys, how are you? Welcome to today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. This is English with Rachelle, aka Tipsy Tutor English, aka Fast English Made Easy, regardless of the title of the podcast. The theme always stays the same. I sit down with a drink of something, coffee, wine, whatever, and I ramble about a topic.

So totally unscripted English. And then I give you the transcript and vocabulary list totally for free on my website, englishwithrachelle.com. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode.

Today's episode is going to be about the potential benefits and challenges of widespread adoption of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.

Hey, so I'm editing this episode here. And I wish that I had read the whole article to you first. So originally I had read the whole thing out to you guys at the very end. Um, and so now, now that I'm editing this. I'm going to copy that and put it here in the beginning, too. So now you can listen to the whole script, the whole. Article that I wrote. And then listen to me, explain it and then listen to it all over again.

So sorry for the confusion, but I hope that helps you kind of follow what I'm saying.

Buckle up. Very exciting.

The widespread adoption of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, offers numerous benefits. Firstly, they help reduce greenhouse emissions, mitigating climate change.

Additionally, they promote energy independence by diversifying energy sources and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable energy also creates jobs in manufacturing, installation, and maintenance sectors. However, challenges include intermittency, as solar and wind energy generation depends on weather conditions. Storage solutions and grid upgrades are needed to ensure reliable power supply. Furthermore, initial investment costs and regulatory barriers can hinder adoption. Despite challenges, the transition to renewable energy is crucial for a sustainable future.

Okay. Hi. So that is the recording. Now I'm going to read it sentence by sentence and explain some things to you guys.

The widespread adoption of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power offers numerous benefits.

So many benefits. A lot of benefits. Firstly, They help reduce, so lessen, greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions is like what is given off whenever greenhouse gases are burned or used. This mitigates climate change. Mitigating climate change, that means

What's the actual definition of mitigating? I just know how to use it mitigating is impeding, lessening, stopping, climate change, mitigating. Additionally, they promote energy independence by diversifying energy resources and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. These renewable energy resources, if you have a diverse, so diversifying, these energy sources, so having a variety, multiple types of energy sources, this will reduce the reliance, so like relying on it, depending on it, having to use it, and only that reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels. These are the major contributor, major sources of our climate change. So that is what this whole article is talking about, renewable energy. Also creates jobs in manufacturing, installation, and maintenance sectors. Manufacturing is creating the actual things like windmills or solar panels. Okay? Installation. Installation is oh gosh, how could you also say that? Like installing? You can use, that's a good word to know actually, installation, installing. Like you can install something on your computer, like an app on your computer, a hard drive... You can install a computer program on your laptop. You can install a fridge in your kitchen. So building the windmill, or like putting the windmill securely on the ground where it will stay forever, right? And then same thing with solar panels, like It's installing them on the rooftops of buildings, okay? So think of it as putting, but more permanent. And maintenance. So maintenance is people going out to the solar panels and making sure that they're still working every month or every year.

That's what maintenance is. You are maintaining this current physical product that you have installed. Okay? And then sector. This is a part of the industry, so the business sector, the Manufacturing sector, like I was just talking about, it's just like a part of that industry, and the industry being renewable energy in this context. All right. However, challenges include intermittency, as solar and wind energy generation depends on weather conditions. However, challenges include intermittency. Intermittency. is like saying inconsistent, right? It's not like very dependable, because wind energy, we have to make sure it's in a windy location to actually generate energy.

We are relying on an inconsistent source, and that source is wind, okay? Same thing with solar panels. Solar panels, they only generate energy when the sun is out, that would be intermittent. It will come and go, the sun.

The wind will come and go. It is intermittent. Does that make sense? However, challenges include Intermittency as solar and wind energy generation depends on weather conditions. So does that make sense? Does that sentence make sense now? I hope so. Storage solutions and grid updates are needed to ensure reliable power supply.

So this is a really good point. So you have to have a big enough storage capacity like a big enough battery to fill up fill up regenerate re- energize for the energy to go into to compensate for when this energy source isn't generating, isn't creating energy. So you're going to have a really big battery.

So on those extra windy days, the wind generator will fill the battery and then that battery will last. Okay. We'll still have enough energy for when the windmill stops turning because it's not windy out anymore. That's what storage capacity is referring to. Or storage solution, sorry. And then grid upgrades are needed to ensure reliable power supply.

Yeah, so grid updates, that's more referring to if the city were to create public solar energy availability, or wind energy, water energy, and then get it to the people, get it to the residents. That's what the grid is relating, is related to. It's from the government installing the windmills, installing the solar panels, and then getting the energy to the houses, versus if you have a house you can choose to put solar panels on your roof, and then the grid's not related to that because the energy from your solar panels on your own roof is going to your own house and your own battery is there, okay?

However, challenges include intermittency, as solar and wind energy generation depends on weather conditions, okay, then storage solutions and grid updates are needed to ensure reliable power supply, we went over that, and then, almost done here. Furthermore, initial investment costs. and regulatory barriers can hinder adaptation or adoption.

Sorry. Can hinder adoption, not adaptation. That's not a word. Yeah, the initial investment cost. So initial investment cost is first off, let's break it down. Initial is the beginning, the first thing, the initial thing. Okay? Investment is putting money, time, and energy into something. To make something happen, okay?

And then cost is, in this context, money. So the initial, like the first amount of money that we need to put into this project is significant and that is a big barrier, a big thing that stops people from doing it, because the initial purchase of windmills, the initial purchase of solar panels is expensive.

And so a lot of times they don't have enough money to do that. Okay last bit. Despite challenges, the transition to renewable energy is crucial for a sustainable future. Despite challenges, so despite the difficulty the transition or the change over to renewable energy is crucial.

Let's read that whole thing over again one time, and I'm not going to explain anything.

The widespread adoption of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, offers numerous benefits. Firstly, they help reduce greenhouse emissions, mitigating climate change.

Additionally, they promote energy independence by diversifying energy sources and reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable energy also creates jobs in manufacturing, installation, and maintenance sectors. However, challenges include intermittency, as solar and wind energy generation depends on weather conditions, storage solutions, and grid upgrades are needed to ensure reliable power supply. Furthermore, initial investment costs and regulatory barriers can hinder adoption. Despite challenges, the transition to renewable energy is crucial for a sustainable future.

There you guys have it! Thanks for listening. Head over to the website. Transcripts are there, vocabulary is there, and you can have all the language learning resources that you need. I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you for listening, and I will catch you guys next time.

Bye!