In recent years, governments are becoming increasingly reliant on market forces to allocate material, human, and financial resources for the selection energy sources for electricity generation. Many nations are privatizing formerly government-owned utilities to introduce an element of competition that can lead to greater efficiency, lower electricity rates, and attract private capital.
Governments are moving toward new regulatory frameworks for making rules and monitoring the application of those rules to ensure that markets work efficiently while, at the same time, advancing social causes. There is an increased globalization of corporate activity, flow of information by modern means, and increased awareness of people. With a growing recognition of the failure of bureaucracies to provide the fundamental necessities of society, the world is moving from centralized planning by bureaucratic elites to more regionalized or localized planning. This fundamental change in the decision-making process is reshaping the future world of energy suppliers and providing a major incentive for adopting sustainable energy resources.
For economic development to take place, something has to be done for the one-third of humanity who struggles to survive without electricity, relying primarily on biomass for heating and cooking. For the many developing nations with no domestic sources of oil and, negative trade balances, the days of recycling petrodollars are at an end. In the past, bank deposits by oil producers were lent out to developing nations to but petroleum. This was a good deal for buyers, who used the loan proceeds to purchase petroleum products, and for suppliers, who received cash for their oil.
The cash from these sales was again places on deposit in banks for another round of petrodollar recycling. Having taken a loss with past 'petro-loans', banks presumably will not be overly eager to enter into new ones. Without being able to borrow petrodollars to fund their purchases of oil, what are the many developing nations without domestic oil reserves and with a negative trade balance to do?
Economic development centered on electricity is the only way to alleviate extreme levels of poverty in areas where human efforts are primarily dedicated to collecting dung, wood, and water. Furthermore, electricity, through communications, increases the awareness of people of the world around them and, through education and training, raises the knowledge level and technical skills of the people, making them better able to help themselves. For every hundred new houses built with electricity, there are about ten or more new businesses that will open. Electricity frees up time from performing domestic chores and provides the power for efficient and reliable manufacturing of goods to meet the basic necessities of life.
Sustainable Energy is coming into its own, partly as a result of decentralization, which allows local people to become more involved with the decision-making process. Also, the price of fossil fuels is making people take a hard look at alternatives. Sustainable energy is now being viewed as a means of mitigating the risk of oil supply disruption, fossil fuel price hikes, and the environmental impact of increased carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, the higher cost of sustainable energy can be rationalized as an insurance premium against the risk of economic turmoil stemming from interruptions in oil flows, price hikes, and climatic change.
For environmental sustainability, it is important to reduce consumption, not substitute oil and gas with renewable sources. Encouraging conservation and enhancing energy efficiency is a starting point to a long-term plan, which will hopefully and eventually ease our dependency on oil.
If you are interested in articles about sustainable domestic energy, see Heartland Energy Colorado
For more articles from this author about varying topics, check out Denver SEO.
No comments:
Post a Comment