GC: n
CT: Nearly every aspect of our daily lives – heating, lighting, cooking, communications, transportation, commerce – depends on electricity. Unfortunately, generating that electricity through the use of traditional fossil fuels can be economically and environmentally costly and a danger to public health.
Electricity generated with fossil fuels, such as oil, coal or natural gas, releases harmful particles into our air and waterways, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, methane and mercury compounds, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Coal-fired power plants are responsible for 22 deaths each year in Massachusetts, according to the Sierra Club.
Clean energy is heat and electricity produced from renewable sources, generating little or no pollution or emissions. These technologies, including those listed below, provide clean, renewable sources of power from local sources of energy, which are sustainable over time rather than finite sources like traditional fossil fuels.
S: http://www.masscec.com/about-clean-energy (last access: 18 December 2014)
N: 1. clean (adj): Old English clæne “free from dirt or filth; pure, chaste, innocent; open, in the open,” of beasts, “ritually safe to eat,” from West Germanic klainoz “clear, pure” (cognates: Old Saxon kleni “dainty, delicate,” Old Frisian klene “small,” Old High German kleini “delicate, fine, small,” German klein “small;” English preserves the original Germanic sense), from PIE root gel- “bright, gleaming” (cognates: Greek glene “eyeball,” Old Irish gel “bright”).
“Largely replaced by clear, pure in the higher senses” (Weekley), but as a verb (mid-15c.) it has largely usurped what once belonged to cleanse.
energy (n): 1590s, “force of expression,” from Middle French énergie (16c.), from Late Latin energia, from Greek energeia “activity, action, operation,” from energos “active, working,” from en “at” + ergon “work, that which is wrought; business; action”.
Used by Aristotle with a sense of “actuality, reality, existence” (opposed to “potential”) but this was misunderstood in Late Latin and afterward as “force of expression,” as the power which calls up realistic mental pictures. Broader meaning of “power” in English is first recorded 1660s. Scientific use is from 1807. Energy crisis first attested 1970.
2. The energy that comes from sources that have little or no impact on the environment.
3. Not to be confused with “green energy,” which refers to energy that is both clean and renewable.
S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=clean&searchmode=none; http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=energy&searchmode=none (last access: 18 December 2014). 2 & 3. TERMIUM PLUS (last access: 18 December 2014).
SYN: pollution-free energy
S: TERMIUM PLUS (last access: 18 December 2014)
CR: autotroph, biomass energy, charging pool, ecology, energy, environment, green energy, hybrid car, hydraulic energy, magnetic energy, ocean wave energy, solar energy, tidal energy, wind energy.
