The Use of the Renewable Energy - Research Paper Example

 1Renewable energy comes from resources that are natural such as wind, tides, sunlight, rain, geothermal heat, and tides. These resources replenish naturally. About 16% of the world’s energy consumption is catered for by renewable energy, traditional biomass taking care of 10%, and hydroelectricity contributing 3.4% to the consumption grid. Other new renewable sources of energy that include (small hydro, geothermal, solar, biofuels and modern biomass catered for 2.8% and are purportedly growing fast. These kinds of statistics on energy generation and consumption in reflect a 19% electricity generation capacity with 16% being generated by hydroelectricity and a further 3% coming from renewables deemed as new. Renewable energy is good because it is non-polluting. In addition, of course as the name tells us it is renewable and does not use resources that can never be replaced. 2But there are other advantages to using renewable sources of energy. The benefits of renewable energy extend to stimulating the economy and creating job opportunities. The money that is invested in renewable energy is typically spent on materials and staff that build and maintain equipment instead of importing energy. The money spent on renewable energy stays in the United States for the most part, often within the same state or county. 3Renewable energy produced in the USA is sold to foreign countries, meaning the country’s deficit in trade is improving. When supply oil faced hiccups in the 1970s, U.S.A started depending on foreign supplies. The impact of this scenario was felt worldwide. The benefits of Production of renewable energy will therefore help in alleviating problems linked to this kind of dependence. Renewable energy has many benefits to the American nation in general’ provided it is pursued and produced in efficient ways. Homes and other socio-economic establishments using renewable are poised to save large sums of cash in the end in addition to them enjoying a stress-free environment. In many instances, use of renewable energy also renders citizens to fuel their homes independently thus making them less dependent. 4Owners of small business entities will also benefit from renewable energy, thus saving money that ids usually used to cater for utilities. Electricity producers and providers can also experience the many benefits accruing from development and supply of renewable energy. There is also Job creation and employment opportunities for professionals in the renewable energy subsector: people who are capable of inventing and innovating renewable energy options and products. Availability of renewable energy products makes the products cheaper. Use of conventional fuels has proved dangerous and has nearly subjected USA to political instabilities, disputes in trade and other unwanted impacts. USA’s reliance on other countries’ energy supplies has not brought any favors to the country. The prosperous country it is should be a wakeup call for the country to make and implement the necessary policies in the adoption and use of renewable energy. A more coherent and widespread generation and use of renewable energy faces a number of constraining factors: The American public is not sufficiently supplied with information on the availability, benefits, and costs of the renewable energy option. Project initiators and supervisors in the renewable energy subsector have in many instances failed the test of understanding and solving the energy and other related needs of rural and to some extent the urban communities. They have also fallen short of designing and implementing projects that solve the energy problems especially in rural America. This can partly be explained by lack of these project initiators to involve the affected communities in the project design and implementation. Government agencies sometimes fail to assess effectively benefits and costs when contrasting and comparing renewable energy versus the traditional/conventional energy sources. This is a product of massive subsidization of traditional/conventional energy sources and options and the failure to evaluate effectively the value of renewable resources to the society and country in general. Emphasis of researching on renewable energy options should be put in order to improve renewable technologies and help in lowering initial energy costs. It has been noted that many commercial/industrial and government personnel prefer using conventional fossil energy/resources to the renewable resources/energy.5Large, sales teams promote traditional energy, and decision makers have a common stakes in these power sources. Overall energy barriers discourage foreign investment, for instance, renewable equipment attracting import duties. Energy policies in USA are determined by state, federal, and local private/public entities, which look into issues of energy production, energy distribution, and subsequent consumption. These policies set standards like building codes in addition to standards on gas mileage. Progress is evident over policies guiding renewable energy in USA. Some federal states have established mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards (RPS) while others have formulated non-binding goals on renewable energy. It has been foreseen that RPS policy measures require development and production of 60gigawatts and above of renewable sources of energy by the year 2025 but this will only cater for around 15% of the electricity demand in that particular year.(Wiser and Barbose, 2008). This progress is somehow modest when comparing scenarios for modern renewable energy consumption/use market. A number of American states are now offering tax incentives to people using or intending to install renewable energy used for heating, lighting, and activating appliances. This shows the state government intends to ease the switch process for energy consumers (from traditional energy to clean renewable energy sources). A number of tax incentives have been put in place for people and institutions who want to embrace renewable energy and they include tax waivers, deductions, credits, and tax status change. Three categories of policies that aim at promoting renewable power are volunteer/outreach policies, financial incentives, and regulations and rules. 6Financial incentives encompass tax exemptions on personal income, exemptions on corporate tax, exemptions on sales tax, and exemptions on property tax, grant, and loan and rebate programs. There are also programs on industry recruitment, production incentives, and lease programs on purchase. In summary, 200 financial incentives do exist to put measures of promotion high up the ladder. Volunteer/Outreach Programs encompass programs on green pricing, programs on voluntary/willing installation and certification, and the outreach programs. Regulations, rules and policies encompass funds for public benefits, rules on generation disclosure, standards on renewable portfolio, rules on net metering, requirements on line extension assessments and analysis, requirements on contractor licensing, equipment certifications, laws on solar access, design and construction standards, and purchase/aggregation of green power. Over 220 regulations, rules, and policies are in place in the quest to promote production and consumption of renewable energy in USA. Emergence of state and federal feed-in tariffs and their proposals in the United States of America portrays a major stride in the development of renewable energy. It is noteworthy that federal feed-in laws on tariffs could help transform the clean energy sector. Enactments on current proposals formulated by the state would present vital precedents to be emulated by other American states. Policies on feed-in tariffs are complimentary and many states in America are of the view that these tariffs have targets that are of portfolio nature and are renewable. Feed-in proposals on tariffs have limited scope and aim their targets on specific technologies that may not compete successfully in RPS markets. These hiccups address policy-cost concerns and promote directly economic and rural development. “Feed-in tariff” comes from the 1990 German Stromeinspeisungsgesetz, which translates to “Electricity feeding-in law.” Formulation and implementation of feed-in tariffs portrays a paradigm shift in policy landscapes and shows the onset of new trends in formulation and adoption of energy policies that are more aggressive at the state and federal levels. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in USA conducted a research, which assessed a number of states and their incentive programs that touch on financial incentives. The agency used the case-study approach, which established a number of themes that were reoccurring. These themes touched on policy effectiveness employed to promote production and consumption of renewable energy. The agency recommended that the public be educated on the benefits of renewable energy, important technology on renewable energy and the available incentive programs. Energy policies include legislations, international treaties, incentives, subsidies, and investment incentives, energy conservation guidelines, taxation and other policy techniques. 7The cumulative capacity of energy produced by wind in USA was 41,400 megawatts (MW) in 2011’s first quarter, making the country second worldwide behind China’s production. Wind power contributed 2.3% of electricity produced in USA, translating to 94,650 thousand megawatt-hours of electrical power. Renewable energy drives around 14 states, which run on 1000MW wind capacity. A further 37 states have installed utility-scale wind power. Texas boosts of the biggest wind farm in USA: The Rosco Wind Farm, which generates (780 MW) as of the year 2009. Wind energy in USA is a growing industry. Increase in wind, geothermal, and solar power are expected to advance production of renewable energy to double in three years-2009 to 2012, which depicts an 8% to 14% of total consumption. Much of this increase is foreseen to come from wind energy. Wind power generation has an annual growth rate of 30%, with a global production capacity of 198 gigawatts (GW) in 2010.It is used widely in USA, Asia and Europe. Airflows can be used Wind turbines can be driven using airflows, and modern turbines have become the most used for commercial purposes; the turbine’s power output is the cube of the wind speed such that when the speed of wind increases, output of power increases dramatically. Wind farms are preferred in areas in areas where there are constant strong winds, areas such as off shores and high altitude areas. Capacity factors range from 20-40%, with upper hand values ranging particularly in favorable sites. 8Globally, long-term wind energy potential is said to surpass global energy production by five times, or 40 or so times the current demand for electricity. This requires installation of wind turbines wind turbines over large areas, particularly in sites with higher wind resources. Subsidies have for a long time been used to encourage and stimulate investments in domestic production of energy. The USA subsidies for coal, nuclear, gas, and hydropower have totaled an approximate value of 500 Billion dollars. This has created an abundance supply of domestic energy, which powers economic growth but also strengthening addiction and use of fossil fuels. Wind power is now a mainstream source of American electricity. Diversifying federal support to include newer, non-polluting, domestic renewable energy technologies like wind is smart energy policy and may allow the wind industry to grow to provide at least 20% of U.S. electricity by 2030. Wind project owners receive tax credits only for electricity produced. Some incentives are permanent in code of tax and have been in place since the 1920’s. Wind energy’s primary incentive, the PTC, has been allowed to expire multiple times since its creation in 1992, and has been consistently reinstated for only one or two year terms.9Investing in wind energy will save billions of dollars in the end through pollution, reduced health, and waste cleanup costs. General policies, legislations, and plans pursued by the Obama government have the goals of providing short0-term solutions to American families as regards distribution and consumption of energy. The aim of the United States’ Department of Energy gears to eliminate energy imports from Venezuela and Middle East within the next 10 years. It also aims at creating millions of jobs in the renewable energy sector as well as advancing measures that reduce green house emissions by 80% by the year 2050. Bibliography Patel, Mukund R. Wind and solar power systems: design, analysis, and operation. 2nd ed. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis, [2006]. Inslee, Jay and Hendricks, Bracken. Apollo's fire : igniting America's clean-energy economy. Washington, DC: Island Press, [2008]. Evans, Robert L. fueling our future: an introduction to sustainable energy. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, [2007]. Hoffman, Jane S and Hoffman, Michael B. Green: your place in the new energy revolution. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, [2008]. Building a Sustainable Energy Future. National Science Foundation (NSF), April 2009 http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publi cations/2009/comments_se_r eport.pdf Gibbs, David. "Sustainability entrepreneurs, ecopreneurs and the development of a sustainable economy." Greener Management International 55 (Feb 2009): 63(16). World Energy Assessment: Energy and the challenges of Sustainability”, 2000 UNDP Evans, Robert L. fueling our future: an introduction to sustainable energy. 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