Question

Many countries and experts around the world are arguing that current mixed economies and the economics that justifies them are no longer sustainable because they are built on predominantly fossil fuel use. Combined with the production/consumption processes that generate a great deal of highly destructive and biosphere-threatening waste, they are no longer effective. Over the next couple of decades, we must transition those economies to a new state where they run predominantly on renewable energy and operate in a circular fashion that eliminates most waste and cooperates with nature. This includes developing a new economy focused on collaboration, resilience, regeneration, and sharing.

You are a newly appointed advisor to the President. Your brief is to develop a plausible challenge to this view and suggest market-based solutions that address the concerns raised. Using concepts and resources from inside the course and online to support your approach, discuss how you would go about doing this or explain why you can’t.

Answer 1

Energy is the source of all physical and economic activities that we perform. We are so much dependent on energy that a day without the availability of energy is highly unsusceptible. It has been widely discussed and viewed around the world that the sources of energy are getting reduced day by day and we are nearing the time, when we will fight amongst ourselves to gain the control over all the remaining bits of sources of energy. One of prominent sources of energy for the last many decades has been the fuel energy. However, renewable energy has taken over the visualizations of the most developed countries. Many economists around the world have argued that fossil fuel energy is no longer sustainable and that we must progressively move towards the use of renewable energy. However, there is a huge ongoing debate over the acceptability and possibility to rigorously move in the direction of generating renewable energy. Being the advisor to the President, we must forwards justifiable reasons as to why this transition from fossil fuel based energy to renewable energy at the current world scenario is not easy to move to and we must exercise a lot of caution in this regard. Let us discuss in brief the arguments that we would place before the President in the favor of our argument here.

                                       Fossil fuel based energy has been the predominant and the most widely accepted and used source of energy since many decades now. Almost all the countries of the world are now dependent on fossil fuel energy and they have set up their respective institutions are energy sectors at par with the extraction and usage or the import and usage of the fossil fuel based energy. Therefore, for all such underdeveloped or the developing economies, it is going to be a huge task to profoundly move to renewable energy as they will first need to have the relevant infrastructure set up for such energy generation and further for the use of such energy. Therefore, it should not be forced on such economies to move on, rather they must be given the platform first to research on their possible transformation and only when they are ready, only then the transformation must be emphasized upon.

                                     For the developed countries too, it is not a very easy task to move to the renewable energy sphere all of a sudden. Very less of such economies have profoundly done their research on the extraction and usage of the renewable energy extensively. The developed countries should first engage in a global platform to discuss the possibilities and the future with the renewable energy and then decide their future course of action.

                                   Moreover, the most important factor that matter is the relevant infrastructure that our country needs to build first. There have a lot of discussion on how we need to proceed, however, we are yet to finalize a proper gateway to the execution of our plans. There are very few infrastructure available for the renewable at present. Therefore, before moving on with the transformation, we must first build adequate number of infrastructure base for the movement.

                                 The cost is another critical factor that should hover around our fast moving thoughts, as it will take a huge deal of capital to build the relevant infrastructure. Therefore, we must exercise adequate caution before we jump in to the conclusion. The more cautious we are, the better we will be prepared to meet the success of renewable energy usage.