Towards Sustainable Energy: A Systematic Review of Renewable Energy Sources, Technologies, and Public Opinions

Abstract

The use of renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, and biomass will not diminish their availability. Sunlight being a constant source of energy is used to meet the ever-increasing energy need. This review discusses the world's energy needs, renewable energy technologies for domestic use, and highlights public opinions on renewable energy. A systematic review of the literature was conducted from 2009 to 2018. During this process, more than 300 articles were classified and 42 papers were filtered for critical review. The literature analysis showed that despite serious efforts at all levels to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by promoting renewable energy as its alternative, fossil fuels continue to contribute 73.5% to the worldwide electricity production in 2017. Conversely, renewable sources contributed only 26.5%. Furthermore, this study highlights that the lack of public awareness is a major barrier to the acceptance of renewable energy technologies. The results of this study show that worldwide energy crises can be managed by integrating renewable energy sources in the power generation. Moreover, in order to facilitate the development of renewable energy technologies, this systematic review has highlighted the importance of public opinion and performed a real-time analysis of public tweets. This example of tweet analysis is a relatively novel initiative in a review study that will seek to direct the attention of future researchers and policymakers toward public opinion and recommend the implications to both academia and industries.