Day 20: Renewable Energy

Originally published: 20th April, 2020 on Facebook and Instagram

Day#20 #EarthDay2020

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Like it or not, the contribution of renewable energy towards the world’s economy will be extremely significant in the coming decade. At least, let’s hope because it is our best defense against climate change. Apart from advantages related to decrease in carbon footprint, renewable energy provides various other important advantages too,

(1) Energy independence: It enables countries to become energy independent. This is of vital importance to a country’s national security because energy independence means not depending on external factors (such as war), external governments/countries/companies for energy.

(2) Stable energy prices: Amid the Covid19 crisis, most of us had not noticed another crisis. It first began with a disagreement between major oil producing countries like Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia which caused crude oil prices to plummet to $30 a barrel. The Covid19 crisis lowered the demand further and this week, crude oil prices are NEGATIVE in the US for the first time in history. I remember, it wasn’t too long ago when the prices were $150 a barrel. What does this mean? That a few countries/companies regulate crude oil generation, supply, demand and pricing. So, it may be time to implement renewable energy technologies that could stabilize energy prices.

(3) Diversifying energy streams: You would have all heard of “diversifying your assets to minimize risk”. So, the question here is, with regard to global energy, why have we put all our eggs into the crude oil basket? Correlated to (1) and (2), diversifying energy production streams can allow us to be less dependent on one source of energy (if and when it disappears) and be advantageous during disaster management, trade disputes or war.

(4) Job creation: Large scale implementation of renewable energy generation involves the hiring of skilled and unskilled labor, thereby leading to job creation.

(5) Grid-independent energy generation: In places and countries where the mainline electric grid infrastructure is weak, production of local energy (such as solar or biogas) means providing energy to smaller communities that are disconnected from the mainline grids.

What renewable energy scientists and engineers need is government subsidies (just like they do with crude oil), public demand and encouragement to implement these technologies at commercial scale. Yes, some of these technologies are not perfect and require some improvement, but a lot of that unpredictability is related to large scale and demand, rather than lab-scale efficacy.

The idea isn’t to ditch fossil fuels overnight. But the initiation of a large scale implementation of renewable energy. This will lead to a gradual but necessary shift from an oil-driven economy to a “Bioenergy Economy”.