In: Economics
1. Does future prosperity depend on the development of renewable
energy technologies? Why or why not?
Solar power is better than nuclear power. Solar energy does not
produce any potentially harmful radioactive waste. However, solar
power plants can be of any scale, while nuclear power plants are
typically very large investments and require enormous financial
outlays to build a modern nuclear power plant.
But in addition, many other energy technologies are being
developed, in the area of renewable energy sources such as wind,
water, and sea waves, technology developments are being developed.
However, geothermal energy and energy storage technologies are
being developed. This is an important issue because in many
developing countries electricity consumption is increasing.
Renewable energy offers significant benefits to our environment, health, and economy. This dramatically reduces pollution from global warming, increases public health, and offers jobs and other economic benefits. And since most renewables do not require water for cooling, relative to fossil-fueled power plants, they dramatically reduce water requirements for power generation.
Wind turbines harness and transform air currents into emission-free power. Wind power is one of the fastest growing renewable technologies in the United States and around the world and has the potential to deliver a significant portion of our electricity needs.The promise of renewable energy is to reduce pollution, delay global warming, create new industries and jobs, and push America towards a cleaner, healthier energy future.
Through increasing the need for foreign oil imports, renewable energy could boost our energy security. Extremely volatile prices have characterized the global oil market and our dependence on oil continues to grow. By switching to renewable energy and using more domestic renewable energy sources instead of importing foreign oil we would drastically improve our energy security and energy independence, not to mention the fact that our money would stay inside our borders instead going to OPEC countries.
Renewable energy offers a wide range of choices. What this means is that, depending on the capacity of each of these sources, countries can choose between sun, air, biomass, geothermal energy, water resources, etc.
In global politics, the influential place. The global clean energy race is very important and in the years to come, winners in this race will reap many political and economic benefits.