Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 mins

Tune In: What is renewable energy and why is it important?

25 mins

Find Out: What are the impacts of using renewable energies?

25 mins

Take Action: Making renewable energy even more sustainable.

5 mins

Reflection

Tune In: What is renewable energy, and why is it important?

Step 1.

Ask your students what the term renewable means.

Explain to students that the current method of producing electricity and energy involves the burning of fossil fuels, which is a non-renewable source of energy (since fossil fuels are finite resources), meaning society is using them at a higher rate than they can be produced.

Discuss with students the negative impacts on the environment and society of our use of fossil fuels:

We will eventually run out of these resources
The burning of fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change by trapping heat in our Earth's atmosphere and interfering with the other spheres on Earth.

Step 2.

Invite students to define what renewable energy is. Have them refrain from giving examples and instead focus on what the term means: energy is produced from resources that can be produced or replaced quicker than they are used.

Step 3.

Ask students to draw pictures of all of the renewable energy technologies they know about in their student worksheet. Bonus points if they can draw the technology as well as the resource it uses. For example, for wind power, they might draw a wind turbine and wind. Some renewable energy technologies might be harder than others, since they may know that hydropower is an energy source but not know what this looks like in reality.

Suggested responses: Wind power, solar energy from the sun, hydropower from water, geothermal power, ocean energy from waves and tides, and bioenergy from organic materials.

Find Out: What are the impacts of using renewable energies?

Step 1.

Display or get your students to browse this webpage from the United Nations - What is Renewable Energy? This webpage gives an overview of the most common renewable energy technologies.

For more information about these technologies and current projects please refer to the Teacher Content Information

Step 2.

Get your students to fill out the table on their student worksheets to get a good overview of each type of energy and the impacts it has. If you want to shorten this activity, you could assign students to groups of 6 and allocate each student a renewable energy to find out about, and then use each other's research to complete the table.

Renewable Energy	How does this technology work, and what renewable resource/resources does it harness?	Positive impacts of this technology on the environment, society and economy.	Is this technology being used in Australia? Where and how?
Solar Energy
Wind Energy
Geothermal Energy
Hydropower
Ocean Energy
Bioenergy

Step 3.

Once students have a good overview of the different types of renewable energy technologies, allow each student to pick a particular sector that they are interested in or want to know more about. Ask students to use the blank diagram of our Earth's spheres in their student worksheet to focus on a particular type of renewable energy.

Their task is to:

Draw a representation of the energy technology where it fits in the spheres (For example, draw bioenergy in the biosphere as it is produced from a range of organic materials).
Annotate the diagram with the positive and negative impacts this renewable technology has on its own spheres and the other spheres. Students will need to research these impacts and the way they influence interconnections between the spheres. For example, bioenergy produces less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels, but it still does produce some, which impacts the atmosphere.
- Renewable technologies have advantages and disadvantages economically and socially but for this research ask students to focus on the environmental impacts!

Note: Even though renewable energy technologies are better for the environment in that they lessen our reliance on the burning of fossil fuels, each comes with its own set of challenges to sustainability. Solar farms require the clearing and use of large areas of land, wind turbines cause impact on animals and habitats through noise pollution and the blades being a danger to birds, geothermal energy releases greenhouse gases during the extraction process, and bioenergy can contribute to land clearing and still releases some greenhouse gas, hydropower can affect the surrounding waterways and biodiversity, tidal power infrastructure can affect marine environments. Nature-positive renewable energy is an important consideration for businesses, governments and individuals in the transition to a net zero economy. The goal is for students to understand this tension to take action on it in the next section!

Take Action: Making renewable energy even more sustainable.

Step 1.

Call on a few students to list a few positive and negative interconnections of their chosen renewable technology on Earth’s spheres.

Ask them if they were surprised to learn about any negative impacts of their renewable technology on the environment. If students were surprised, ask them to explain why.

Step 2.

Show or read the following quote from the Nature-Positive Renewables paper from the European Environmental Bureau:

The success of the energy transition will ultimately rely on scaling up renewable energy capacity in harmony with nature protection and by involving local communities, while at the same time reducing energy and material consumption through increased energy efficiency and sufficiency, and enhancing circularity in the use of resources and products.
European Environmental Bureau, 2022

Discuss with students what they think this means. What do we need to do moving forward to create a successful energy transition?

Explain to students that a massive consideration for businesses, governments and individuals as society transitions to a net zero economy is creating NATURE POSITIVE renewable energy infrastructure. This essentially means that renewable energy technologies do not have a negative effect on the environment and communities surrounding them.

Note: This lesson focuses on environmental nature positive renewable energy projects to align with students’ learnings about the spheres of our Earth and the interactions between them. However, another big area of concern in the transition to a net zero economy is the effect of these projects on the communities where they are based, especially First Nations communities. RE-Alliance is a not-for-profit organisation working to deliver social outcomes and advocate for meaningful benefits for communities and regions during the energy transition. You might be interested in this aspect of the transition or could task students requiring extension to investigate this further within the next task.

Step 3.

Watch the following video until 1:50 mins about a dual-use solar farm in Minnesota with your students, which shows a solar farm that has been used to have a positive impact on pollinators.

Aurora solar farm and dual-use solar - Enel North America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmCsqYjZzOk)

Discuss your students’ observations of the video:

How is this an example of a nature positive energy project?
What would be the impact on the environment without the plants and bees?
What are some other positive impacts this project has on the solar panels?

Step 4.

Task your students with creating/designing their own nature positive renewable energy project using the pollinator solar farm as their inspiration. They could work individually or in groups to design and present as an annotated drawing, or create a poster or PowerPoint presentation to show their ideas. The goal is to reduce the negative environmental impacts of one of the renewable energy technologies they have already looked at.

You can find some resources to help students understand impacts of these energy projects, (including things that are already being done and things that are looking to be done) below:

Wind and solar
- PAPER - Biodiversity strategy: Nature-positive wind and solar farms by 2030
Geothermal energy (capturing emissions and turning to stone - this is nature neutral but can give students inspiration!)
- VIDEO: Iceland keeps its carbon underground - But how? - Energy Live News
- WEBSITE: Geothermal Energy - Carbfix
- VIDEO: Turning CO2 into stone in Iceland - earthrise
Hydropower
- WEBSITE: How sustainable hydropower can promote biodiversity - International Hydropower Association
Tidal power
- WEBSITE: What is Tidal Energy? - Earth.org

Students requiring support could profile a nature positive project that already exists.

Students requiring extension could assess the feasibility of their design by comparing to current projects and making a plan for when, where and how to implement their vision, including what people, industries, communities and governments would need to be involved.

Step 5.

Conduct a gallery walk of your students’ designs and invite students to give each design a 2 stars and a wish (two highlights and one thing that could be better).

Optional Extension - What careers would enable more sustainable energy production in the future?

To build upon this knowledge of the projects and technologies that are being used or could be used in the future to transition to a net zero economy, students could be tasked with diving a little deeper into the careers that will enable these projects to exist and flourish.

Students can use the document ‘The Million Jobs Plan: Powering jobs, wages and economic growth’ which is available online at: The Million Jobs Plan - Beyond Zero Emissions (bze.org.au)

They can choose a renewable energy type and sector, and research using the plan and the internet in order to prepare a job advertisement for a career that this industry needs. It should explain:

The renewable energy and what it is
Where the job will be (Where is this renewable energy going to be established?)
The potential growth in the particular industry
How many different types of jobs (and potential numbers) that the industry or industries need
Why it would be a good job to go into for the future

Reflection (5 mins)

• How has your understanding of renewable energy changed after this lesson?
• What do you hope for the future?
• How could you see yourself involved in society's transition to a net zero economy?

Renewable Energy and Its Impacts on Earth’s Spheres

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Renewable Energy and Its Impacts on Earth’s Spheres

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