Graph 1 Research Paper

Renewable energies may cost a little more than fracking but the difference is that they cause less damage to the environment and our health. Funnily enough renewable energies have stopped being researched in the past few years because of fracking.

One of these concerns is that the cost transitioning to clean energy would be too expensive. It is true that shifting to green energy would have notable start-up costs; however, generating energy from these

Between 1990-91 and 1995-96, total fossil fuel subsidies in 14 developing countries that account for 25 percent of global carbon emissions from industrial sources declined 45 percent, from $60 billion to about $33 billion)…Within the past six years, India, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil also cut fossil fuel subsidies significantly…Many developing countries are also actively promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Renewable energy’s increasingly greater power output has “made wind and solar more competitive with fossil fuels in many regions” (Warrick). In fact, renewable energy has improved so much, both financially and technologically, that many “developing economies will ultimately choose renewables over cheap coal”, enabling them to “skip over a generation of technology” (Warrick). Hydropower, geothermal energy, solar energy, and wind energy will only keep improving in power output until they inevitably become the best choice for electricity. Now that private tech companies have begun to back renewables, their technology is increasing at an extraordinary pace. With more prominent business leaders supporting renewables, the public is more inclined to accept them. People like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (and many other companies), fund and promote clean energy projects to raise popular support and develop new renewable technologies. Some people argue, however that renewable energy will never produce enough energy to power the entire United States. After all, “by 2016, wind energy accounted for just over 6.7 percent of U.S. electricity production” and solar energy sits at just “0.6 percent” (Renewable). While this number seems extremely low, it has been increasing rapidly. In 2012, “solar energy accounted for only 0.2 percent of the electricity

While this is great to the consumer, the renewable sector’s growth was more stagnant. Attention was diverted to use another greenhouse producing fossil fuel rather than a clean renewable. A trend in U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (2017) data showed renewable sector’s power production since 2008 grew only 5.7% as compared to natural gas production 18%. Another disadvantage to the diversion from renewables is the additional carbon dioxide generated from these additional plants operating. “About 24 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are related to natural gas in 2011” (Natural gas prices. (n.d.)). The replacement of coal-fired power plants with natural gas has let to a decrease of the green house gases, mainly particulate matter and sulfur dioxide emissions. “Sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions produced in the generation of electricity at power plants in the United States declined by 73% from 2006 to 2015, a much larger reduction than the 32% decrease in coal-fired electricity generation over that period.” U.S. Energy Information Administration (2017). This shows that more efficient control equipment can be used to almost eliminate the trace amounts of sulfur dioxide in natural gas.

These sources of energy have a great upside, but right now are incredibly inefficient compared with fossil fuels because of the lack of funding and worldly push (2009). If there isn’t a bigger investment in these alternative energies, fossil fuels are going to maintain their stranglehold on all the economies of the world (Lomborg, 2009).

Firstly, and put very simply, fossil fuels are non-renewable! Once the finite deposits of brown and black coal are exhausted around the planet there will be no more energy generated by this process. Current estimates predict that all known coal deposits will be exhausted within the next 120 years.

more traditional sources such as coal or natural gas. In the article The Cost of

that producing energy from solar photovoltaic (PV) is the most expensive, with a cost of 21.1 ¢/kWh due to the high prices of solar panels. Contrarily, the least priced renewable energy to generate is hydropower at 8.6 ¢/kWh considering dams require very low maintenance and can last up to 50 years. Petroleum is the most costly fossil fuel to generate, amounting at 12.5 ¢/kWh because petroleum is laborious to pump. Natural gas offers the lowest generation cost of 6.6 ¢/kWh, with the reason being that the technologies for drilling and cracking is

With the carbon emission regulations recently introduced by US government, natural gas is the most likely substitution to coal for electricity generation for years to come. Latest price reductions made natural gas from a cost perspective much more attractive than coal.

Renewable energy can be more affordable to people in the U.S. There are many possible ways it can be more affordable. For example, a renewable energy such as electricity can power automobiles with a be less expensive cost than to power it on fuel. Since fuel is related with international market, the price on fuel often result to inflation and deflation (Leistikow n. pag.). According to the chart on Gasoline vs. eGallon prices, Dan Leistikow compares, “Fueling your car with gasoline costs roughly 3 times more than fueling with electricity” (n.

Geothermal Energy The human population is currently using up its fossil fuel supplies at staggering rates. Before long we will be forced to turn somewhere else for energy. There are many possibilities such as hydroelectric energy, nuclear energy, wind energy, solar energy and geothermal energy to name a few. Each one of these choices has its pros and cons.

While wind power is currently more expensive per unit of energy (the initial cost of construction is spread across a turbine’s lifetime, generally around 20-30 years) than alternatives such as coal; wind power lacks the negative externalities that other energy

Renewable energy in its various forms can be over 5 times more expensive than conventional types of fossil fuel forms of energy generation and none are

Instead of coal being the main fuel source, it will now be natural gas; using natural gas in place of coal will reduce emissions by approximately 50 percent (Pacala 2004, 969). This is a big step towards MSU’s goals of being a green campus and using sustainable energy. However, while natural gas has lower emissions, it does cost more than coal. In September of 2015, Powder River Basin Coal cost $537/MWh (megawatt hour) and Natural Gas Henry