Which one among the following is a non-conventional source of energy?
- (a)Petroleum
- (b)Coal
- (c)Radioactive elements
- (d)Solar energy
Correct — D, Solar energy. In the Indian classification used by school geography and by the government's own nomenclature, conventional sources are the ones long in commercial use — coal, petroleum, natural gas, firewood and, in the standard textbook grouping, hydel and nuclear power — while non-conventional or new and renewable sources are those developed later and drawn from flows that renew themselves: solar, wind, biogas, small hydro, geothermal, tidal and ocean thermal energy. Solar is the first name on that second list. It is inexhaustible on any human timescale, it is available almost everywhere in India, and it produces no carbon dioxide at the point of generation. The other three options are all long-established commercial fuels drawn from finite stocks laid down or formed over geological time.
- (a)Petroleum — A fossil fuel and the archetypal conventional source — a finite stock formed from buried marine organisms over millions of years, and the mainstay of transport fuel for a century.
- (b)Coal — The oldest conventional commercial fuel of all, formed from buried plant matter and still India's largest single source of electricity. Nothing about it is non-conventional.
- (c)Radioactive elements — The one that costs marks. Nuclear power feels modern, but uranium and thorium are mined minerals in finite supply, and in the standard Indian classification nuclear energy is grouped with the conventional sources alongside coal, oil, gas and hydel. Newness of technology is not what the term measures.
Energy sources are sorted along two different axes, and mixing them up is what makes these questions difficult. One axis is renewable against non-renewable, which asks whether the source replenishes itself. The other is conventional against non-conventional, which asks whether the source has long been in commercial use. The two overlap but do not coincide: firewood is renewable yet conventional, and nuclear power is non-renewable and, in the Indian scheme, also conventional. India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is the department for the non-conventional group.
The safest way through the item is to ask which source has only recently entered commercial use at scale, not which one is cleanest or newest-sounding. Coal and petroleum fail that test immediately. Radioactive elements fail it too once you recall that nuclear power is counted among the conventional sources in this classification, even though the technology is twentieth-century. That leaves solar. Anchoring to the exam date matters here: at the November 2020 exam India's installed solar capacity was of the order of a few tens of gigawatts and the national renewable target still spoke of 175 GW by 2022. Since then the target has been raised to 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 and solar has become the largest renewable source in the country, so any figure quoted from 2020 should be treated as a snapshot, not as the current position.
- Conventional sources are those long in commercial use — coal, petroleum, natural gas, firewood, and in the standard Indian classification hydel and nuclear power.
- Non-conventional or new and renewable sources include solar, wind, biogas, small hydro, geothermal, tidal and ocean thermal energy.
- Renewable and non-conventional are not synonyms: firewood is renewable but conventional, nuclear is non-renewable and conventional.
- The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is the Union ministry responsible for the non-conventional group.
- India's renewable target was 175 GW by 2022 at the time of this exam and has since been raised to 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030.
- Classifying nuclear energy as non-conventional because the technology is modern.
- Treating renewable and non-conventional as the same category; firewood breaks the equivalence.
- Quoting a 2020 installed-capacity figure as though it were current — India's renewable capacity has grown sharply since.
As a one-line odd-one-out, as a sorting item across several sources, or as a scheme-and-ministry question on the renewable energy programme.
With reference to two non-conventional energy sources called ‘coalbed methane’ and ‘shale gas’, consider the following statements : 1. Coalbed methane is the pure methane gas extracted from coal seams, while shale gas is a mixture of propane and butane only that can be extracted from fine-grained sedimentary rocks. 2. In India, abundant coalbed methane sources exist, but so far no shale gas sources have been found. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(d) Neither 1 nor 2
The same vocabulary applied at a harder level. Both statements there are wrong on their facts, but the item shows how far the label 'non-conventional' now reaches — well beyond solar and wind, into unconventional hydrocarbons that India has in fact identified across several basins.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is a non-renewable source of energy?
- (a)Wind
- (b)Natural gas
- (c)Tidal energy
- (d)Biogas
Answer(b) Natural gas — a fossil fuel drawn from a finite stock. Wind, tidal energy and biogas all draw on flows that renew themselves.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Union ministry responsible for solar and wind energy programmes in India is the Ministry of
- (a)Power
- (b)New and Renewable Energy
- (c)Coal
- (d)Petroleum and Natural Gas
Answer(b) New and Renewable Energy — the ministry that handles the non-conventional energy programme, distinct from the Ministry of Power.