Renewable Energy: Are Sources Credible?

The article “Renewable Energy,” without an author listed, talks about the variety of alternative energy resources and how they believe these resources are a better option. It talks a lot about alternative energy being used throughout the United States, and even mentions Obama’s plan for alternative energy usage. This article, however, does not include some essential information that is needed to make the website credible.

In the article “Renewable Energy,” energy.gov tries to use statistics and different examples to establish credibility, however, there is no author listed, and no sources cited, therefore, the website is not credible. It mentions, “a clean energy revolution is taking place across America,” and that there is a “steady expansion of the [United States] renewable energy sector.” This article includes a lot of general information and somewhat attempts to persuade you to think a certain thing, however, the way the information is written sometimes makes it sound more like an opinion. Also, there is no author listed for the article, so, I would say that we could make the connection that the person whom wrote this article does have an affiliation with the renewable energy organization. In addition to this, if we do assume that the unknown author of the article is affiliated with the organization, we can also assume that the information that is written by this author is biased, and will side with the renewable energy organization. Therefore, we cannot be sure of the reliability of the information from this article.

Since the website ends in “.gov,” you would usually be able to assume that the website should be automatically credible, however, with a missing author, and no credentials listed, there is no way for us to identify how credible the article really is, or how qualified the author is to write this information. With the assumption that the author is affiliated with the renewable energy organization, the article in general is on the organization’s website, so the information could be impartial, and only listing the good parts to the topic. Also, the website does include links to other pages, however, the links only take you to another page that is published on the same website, which is another factor that puts into question the credibility of this article.

This “Renewable Energy” article is ultimately not a reliable source of information due to the missing parts that would help establish the credibility of the article. With the author presumably a part of the renewable energy organization, I would say it is safe to believe that the point of view of the author is at least somewhat biased and objective, Additionally, there is not author name or publication date listed, so we are not able to view the author’s credentials, or determine if the author is even qualified to write about this topic. This also leads to us to question how factual the information and examples given in this article are. Ultimately, this article is not a reliable source of information since we are not able to establish credibility for the article.

Works Cited

“Renewable Energy.” Department of Energy. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.