How is the chemical energy in Fossil Fuels related to the sun's energy?

Question

Science

Answer 1

There are many ways to answer this. The Sun provides energy for weather patterns and living things. Living things make fuel. Other living things eat living things or things which were once living. This continues. Living things eventually die. The dead decompose. Sometimes they decompose in such a way that they have the potential to become oil or coal under appropriate conditions. The energy is thus stored until we harvest and use that energy.
Next way to answer that question:
Fossil fuels are converted into other forms of energy such as heat or electricity. The Sun's energy is converted to other forms of energy such as heat and fuel for organisms. The energy that can be collected from fossil fuels per unit time is great by comparison to that which can be collected from the sun. But the sun's energy was stored over one or more lifetimes of the creatures which took advantage of it during their receptive lifetimes. What may have take hundreds or more years to store is then used in hours or minutes.

Answer 2

when fossil fuels are burnt they use chemical energy to release the solar energy that is stored via photosintesis
or when animals eat a plant (solar energy stored via photosynthesis) they digest it (chemical energy) then the animal dies, it decomposes and an¡fter millions of years it becomes fossil fuels

Answer 3

The easiest way to put it is to say that when we use fossil fuels we are burning stored sunlight. This is because the suns energy is stored via photosynthesis or through trophic levels that eat plants, then died and became your fuel.