Alternative sources of energy

Description:

The majority of energy is currently produced by the use of fossil fuels (oil and gas). At this moment the European Union region does not have any major deposit of these types of resources, being almost completely dependent of external suppliers (Russia and Middle Eastern contries).

Renewable sources of energy are an alternative because they can be easily replenished and generated using available resources like waste, Sun and wind. With the researches that are being conducted at this moment, the European Union can become more independent of external fluctuations of prices and supplies of those fossil fuels. Unfortunatelly those renewable sources are still higher priced than the current oil products on use nowadays.

Because of that nuclear energy may be the best option to fossil fuels, as it has a more developed technology and is being used for several years in a commercial scale.
The evolution of energy prices (in particular oil) over the past years indicates that there is a significant change in trends and that high energy prices will have in future a sustainable character.

Enablers:

• Governments
• Public opinion
• Climate change
• "Green conscience"
• Environmental agencies
• Researchers
• Prices are very volatile
• Increasing costs of tranportation and energy

Inhibitors:

• Price of those alternative sources of energy are still high when compared to fossil fuels
• Alternatives are still not very efficient when compared to oil and gas
• Financial crisis reduced the amount of money being invested on researches
• Sometimes not aesthetically pleasing e.g wind turbines
• Hazardous to ecosystems e.g. dams create barriers for migrating fish,
• Extensive land use is required which could otherwise be farmed

Paradigms:

For 30 years, governments and international institutions have been aware of the limits of conventional energy and its broad damaging consequences. However implementation of renewable sources of energy have not progressed as fast as fossil fuel energy consumption has increased. Governments have tried to reach a global consensus for action which instead leads to paralysis. As a result, world civilizations are still dependent on fossil fuels. Less than 20 billion dollars of the tax payers’ money was spent in the last 30 years to promote renewable energy as opposed to 1 trillion spent on atomic energy research.

Experts:

• Research centers
• Environmental agencies
• Universities
• Manufacturers of wind turbines, solar panels and waste to gas converters
• Petroleum geologists

Resources:=

[1] http://www.calder.net/mwright/2003-10-06-renewable-energy.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy
[3] http://www.unfoundation.org/files/pdf/2005/WTOspeeches/ScheerSpeechGeneva2005_FINAL.pdf
[4] http://www.fesdc.org/Dettke_renew.pdf
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