[Music] hi and welcome back to free science lessons co.uk by the end of this video you should be able to State the main fossil fuels used for energy you should then be able to describe the advantages and the disadvantages of using fossil fuels now the modern world uses a huge amount of energy and the amount is grown each year we use it for transport for example in ships we use energy to generate electricity and we use energy to heat our homes and offices so we're looking at energy resources and in this video we're focusing on fossil fuels I'm showing you here the three main fossil fuels we've got coal oil and gas now fossil fuels Supply around 80% of the world's total energy needs and that's because they've got a number of advantages here's the First Advantage fossil fuels are reliable in other words they always provide energy when we need it now that's a huge Advantage when compared with other sources of energy for example renewable sources here's a second Advantage fossil fuels release a great deal of energy that makes them extremely useful for example in airlanes airlanes can fly for thousands of miles before refueling and that's because jet fuel which is made from oil can provide a huge amount of energy here's a third Advantage fossil fuels are abundant in other words the world still has plenty of coal plenty of oil and plenty of gas that makes fossil fuels relatively cheap Here's the final advantage of generating energy from fossil fuels fossil fuels are extremely versatile in other words we can use them for transport generating electricity and for heating one of the reasons for this is that they're portable which means that they're very useful for example to power vehicles not all sources of energy are as versatile as fossil fuels in particular the renewable sources now there are some major disadvantages to using fossil fuels for energy here's the first disadvantage burning fossil fuels releases a huge amount of carbon dioxide and that's contributing to climate change we're going to be discussing that in a later video when we look at how energy use in the UK is changing here's the second disadvantage fossil fuels are non-renewable now that means that they're not being replenished or replaced as we use them so fossil fuels will one day run out now that's not going to be for a very long time but it will eventually happen if we continue to use them the third disadvantage of using fil fuels for energy is that they can release other pollutants for example burning diesel in cars and lorries releases carbon particles and nitrogen oxides we now know that both of these are extremely dangerous to human health burning coal can produce sulfur dioxide which leads to acid rain and this damages buildings and trees in the next video we're going to look at renewable sources of energy remember you'll find plenty of questions on the use of fossil fuels for energy in our vision workbook and you can get that by clicking on the link above okay so hopefully now you should be able to State the main fossil fuels used for energy you should then be able to describe the advantages and the disadvantages of using fossil fuels [Music]