Obstacles for the Spread of Renewable Energy Sources

Renewable energy sources like solar wind or geothermal all have lots of benefits. They’re eco-friendly (free of toxic emissions to the atmosphere) and constantly refilled by the nature itself. We can not run out of them. They’re also cheap (after initial investment was recurred), and some of them even free. Good example is solar power that has zero cost of capturing sun rays. At this point important question arises: why we actually still use fossil fuels? Why wind, solar and others are called alternative energy sources, and not the primary ones?

The problem that we touch here is a complex one, and we have to see the big picture of global situation to really understand it. I’ll just tell you that more than 70% of obstacles to spread of renewable energy are of political not technical nature. Below you can read about some of the actual reasons.

Governmental grants in great numbers are placed into fossil fuels industry. Of course it doesn’t happen by itself –  oil consortiums are actively lobbying year after year to make it happen. Thanks to that oil and coal energy prices are lower than they “really” are. We still pay the full price (in taxes) but it just seems to be lower. Alternative energy sources on the other hand do not receive so much subsidies, and are struggling with tons of unsupporting regulations.

Traditional energy consortiums can control the market very easy, thanks to low level of customers awareness. The average Joe will not actively seek for other opportunities that those he’s told about in TV.

Most of customers in any given industry will just buy “what’s on the menu”, and not ask for anything else. It’s just the same with energy industry.

Another thing is that we’re lacking  adequate technical and manufacturing stuff needed for large scale production of these technologies. The reason is that it’s in early stadium of commercialisation. Customers can’t get information and training they need easy, so some of them just stay with current supplier.

One more problem is a sort of technical lock-in we got into. All electricity devices we use nowadays are designed for centralised power plants and it’s difficult to overcome the all electricity system.

Understanding these obstacles above we fully recognize how huge transformation we need to make in our whole social system and in governments policies. Most of all we need to allow unconstrained development of this solutions and stopped favouring fossil fuels industry.

Renewable Energy and the Public Policy Transformation

We live in interesting times. Renewable electricity sources age spreading on the market, new technologies are still being invented and prices of traditional fuels constantly pick up. I believe we should consider what does it all mean for us – for our  everyday lives that we live today and for our future social changes.

We get alternative energy from few different sources like wind and water turbines, geothermal power plants,  or solar batteries).  Commercialisation of these solutions is taking place from quite a long time already. Believers of these solutions claim this is because of active work of oil industry. People connected to it are told to be spending huge money on lobbying and bribing government to keep things just as they are today. Oil and coal consortiums get huge subsidies and other support (like supporting regulations) from governments, and media burry real social costs of their use. Mainstream media also do not say anything about possible alternatives (like alternative energy sources, among which some can be called free energy generator). Just like everyone was somehow wired to chose close term benefits over long term benefits.

If we want to change things we need to take the economy to the debate. Economists have discussed it many times,  what exactly should be done to switch the world into using renewable energy. The one single most important think they talk about is… taxes. Change of taxes is necessary as long as we’re talking about long term transformation. What is necessary is lowering income taxes and raising taxes on environmentally destructive solutions (connected to fossil fuels industry). For example coal use equals increased health care costs associated with breathing polluted air, the costs of acid rain damage. Things like that should be included within ‘fossil fuels tax’. The main idea is to make using coil and oil a bad deal. Some of modern economies in Europe (likeNorway,France,Germany, orItaly) already started implementing this tax shifting (the call it “Environmental Tax Reform”). And it brings great effects. For instance inGermanytraditional fuels use has been lowered by 5% in just two years.

Another crucial issue economists arise is a need of grants shifting. As long as governments will subside oil industry, there will be expansion on fossil fuels usage. What we need is to relocate subsidies traditional energy into renewable solar, wind, and geothermal power. In parts of the Europe and Asia this has already started, but in United States it’s just the opposite – the financial support for fossil fuels and nuclear power has been increased.

When global economic crisis began main economies allocated big money into renewable energy. That was to support recovery of global economy. This may be good beginning of a new stage of these technologies development and spread.

Renewable Energy – overview

Renewable energy is a electricity that we receive from natural processes phenomena like geothermal heat, wind, ocean waves or sunlight. That natural phenomena are constantly repeated, and will be constantly repeated forever. Using this sources, we know they’re replenished immediately. If we don’t make use of them  they will just go to waste.

free energy generatorToday the process of replacing traditional energy sources (fossil fuels) with renewable sources is actually just starting. It will be realize on four different areas simultaneously. There will be transformations in:  generating electric energy, fuels used for transport, heating of buildings (and getting hot water) and rural (off-grid) energy services. Let’s examine them a bit closer.

Energy Generating. Nowadays we receive 18 % of all electricity worldwide from renewables. Receivers of many sorts (for example water turbines, windmills, solar panels – free energy generator) are spread across the world. Some of economies managed already to switch into using renewable sources as main ones, or even the only ones. LikeIceland – they’re receiving one hundred percent of electric power from renewables.Brazil also is doing well getting 85 % andNew Zealand 65 %.

Space heating. In some economies using solar rays to heat water makes an important contribution to energy usage policy. We can see that inChinawhere they supply about 50 to 60 million households with this system. There are estimations saying that the rest of the world there is about 70 million building that use that system for water heating. Other houses are heated with biomass, and direct geothermal heating. InSwedenusage of biomass energy has already surpassed that of oil.

Transport fuels. In that area we find renewable source in a form of biofuels. They are in use worldwide (although not in all countries) and let is to partly replace gasoline use. These are the ways transformation into renewable energy sources goes today.

Main alternative energy sources

We as a human race use more and more of electricity every year. Fossil fuels will come to an end sooner or later and we will have to switch into some alternatives. We use some of them already (in most countries on a small scale). Lets have a look at most popular of them.

windmills + solar panelsOne -Windmills. They’re with us for hundred years already. Wind is a great energy source as it’s renewable (it will keep blowing) and ecological (we don’t need to emit any sort of toxic smoke, to use it). It’s widely accessible across the world. The minus of this solution is that using it we depend on the weather. If there is no wind, we get electricity amount equal to zero – not fun.

Two - Solar panels. Sun emits so huge amounts of  power that if we could capture all of it for just one hour  - we would be able to power with electricity the whole planet for a whole year. Nowadays we use few kinds of solar panels like, photoelectric cells, and heliostats (which are basically synchronised mirrors following sun as it moves on the sky).

Three - Free energy generator – basing on Zero Point Magnetic Power. Therese are magnetic devices  producing higher quantity of energy than they use. Working 100%  to power your house.  You can buy an e-book and build it by yourself – e-book are popularised on a Do It Yourself scheme.

Four - Biomass. This is basically everything that comes from living organism We’ve bee using it for the longest time. During ancient times we used wood to get fire. There is a minus  of this biomass. And it is that unless you use plant that was already death, you need to put next plants into the ground to keep ecosystem in harmony.

Five - Water turbines. Putting turbine into strong water current we get  the same result as we get with windmills. It’s just taking place underwater. This source is independent from the weather. Unfortunately is limited to places in close vicinity  to rivers.