The Global Trend Of The European Union

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political partnership between 28 different countries. It consists of about half a billion citizens, and its combined economy represents about 20 percent of the world’s total economy (Briney, 2015). Today The European Union works as a single market, with free movement of people, goods and services from one country to another. There is a standard system of laws to be followed, and since 1999 many countries share a single currency called the Euro (Europa.eu, 2015). This essay will explore the background history of the European Union and the benefits and drawbacks of the European Union.

Nowadays, coal is still one of the greatest used energy to generate power in so many countries. Using coal in electricity generation is 93% in South African, 87% in Poland, 79% in China, 78% in Australia, 45% in USA, 41% in Germany, 58% in Israel etc. (Coal & Electricity) From the data above, even the developed countries use coal to generate power as the main source. In many developed countries, energy generation is still based on coal as a long-term source. In recent years, although there is an increasing number of equipment using gas and wind to generate the power, it is still lower than the proportion of coal-fired power generation. The reason why most countries choose coal as a main source to generate electricity, is that there are many advantages in using coal to generate electricity. First of all, coal is the

On the same note, the energy revolution spoken of above brings forth another advance in the ongoing global climate situation. The nature of the Kyoto Protocol calls for nations to increase research and eventually semi-convert their energy usage to accommodate for cleaner energy. Products such as solar power, wind power, biomass, geothermal power, and hydropower are now widely being studying to create processes that use less coal, oil, and natural gas in production. Altogether the results have

Renewable energy has currently become a significant aspect in the countries generation, combination, and a constitution focus of government policy for energy, and environmental protection. As a result of public’s growing responsibility for the environment and constantly binding rules, and regulations of emission in the electric power industry, government has facilitated policies to boost the amount of renewable energy in the electricity generation portfolio. Additionally, the generation of electricity from renewable resources creates insufficient, and frequently, zero emissions of pollutants that comes from traditional fossil fuel production technologies. The additional use of renewable energy aids utilities in their emission agreement obligations. Furthermore, the anticipation of agreement with any future carbon emissions management would further toughen the incentive to move towards cleaner electricity creating technologies (Langwith, 2009).

An important role of them is to generate energy from natural resources, for instance solar thermal. It is a solar water heater that uses the power of the sun to heat water thus reducing the amount of gas or electricity required. In fact, according to Education Scotland, solar power plants in Spain have generated 3 gigawatts of power which represents 2.8% of Spain’s energy needs (Solar – Renewable Energy, 2016). There are many renewable energy technologies that can prevent acid rain, urban smog, pollution and the burning of coal. Canada has improve on its uses of fossil fuel, the uses of renewable energy grew from 2% to 11% (Healing, 2016). Therefore, if using renewable energy sources will give us the luxurious of being able to have electricity, heat our homes, transport, and protect the environment, then why not use it.

Though the United States has been holding back, several other countries have begun making changes for “scientific uncertainty is no excuse for inaction on an environmental problem,” as stated by a German principle in the 1980s. Later in 1990, Germany added environmental protection in their constitution (John Dryzek, 167). Several other countries have also implemented Green policies and set goals to accomplish in the upcoming years. In Saskatchewan, Canada, the 2009 investment for wind powered renewable energy was reported at $162 billion dollars towards the installation of renewable energy (Garrett Richards, 691). Europe also has allocated $105 billion Euros to “subsidize ‘green’ programmes and infrastructures,” The Renewable Energy industry involves 350,000 jobs and generates 40 billion Euros a year in business, according to Oliver Shafer, the policy director of the Renewable Energy Council in Brussels (Quirin Schiermeier, 264-265). In 2009 when

Renewable energy industry is taking more of a foothold, due to an increase in the price of coal and other raw materials that are

Recently, a report by REN21 (Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century) reported two facts that set the stage for the growth of green energy. First, in 2015, the global economy experienced the largest annual increase of renewable energy; second, developing economies spent more than developed countries on increasing their use of green energy. Another notable fact to mention is that the substantial increase in green energy

The big countries like US, Canada, Brazil, China and Germany still have the greatest renewable power generation capacity. These countries seem to rule when it comes to renewable energy source. For the first time, China’s new renewable power capacity has passed new fossil fuel and nuclear capacity. In the 2014 edition of the REN21 report it states that, while Europe and North America have become the top markets for renewable energy, other countries have seemed to pick up some of baggage and could also be the future leaders of it. REN21 has found so

Although things seem rather dim light for the mountain of problems we’ve been avoiding to handle, others have taken it upon themselves to find a solution by pressing the technological advances on renewable energy and lower its price tag to make it more available to others. Tesla, a car company with a line of cars running solely on electricity. Their first few models ran a very high price tag make it almost impossible for most middle and lower class citizens to join the eco-frontier. The company created a new car with the idea of lower income families in mind pricing it on almost an average with new economic cars. They’ve also pressed the matter of transitioning from fossil fuels to a cleaner form of energies that they’ve released their blue prints of their cars to the public. Renewable energies aren’t being used only in cars, they’re being used on homes to fill all our necessity and luxuries needs of living with the forms such as solar power, water, and wind. Solar panels are being seen more and more on houses to fill homes with electricity. Collecting the heat rays from the sun to convert it to electricity that fills all home needs and can fuel your car. Wind turbines have been set up in open fields to harness the powerful winds to fuel power for cities to event states. Smaller turbines have been set in people’s yards to fuel their

* France is committed to renewable energy source, with the government setting a target of 20% of all energy source to be renewable by 2020

In recent years, more has been debated on whether or not nonrenewable energy such as fossil fuel has caused global warming. Sakamoto and Managi (2016) believe fossil fuel is the likely reason that temperatures have been rising from greenhouse gases, increasing the CO2 emissions (p. 1). With depleting resources, it may be a good idea to look more seriously at renewable energy (Sakamoto & Managi, 2016, p. 16). More governments have been trying to create policies to encourage usage of renewable energy. However, it has been debated what is the best way to enforce renewable energy. In this paper, I will discuss two ways countries have been encouraging renewable energy through feed-in tariffs and taxes.

In 2006, almost half of Ukraines energy consumption came from natural gas (Bank, 2007). In 2007, Ukraine produced 0.67 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) and consumed 3.1 Tcf of natural gas, making it the former Soviet Union's largest natural gas net importer (Bank, 2007). Ukraine is the sixth-largest consumer of gas in the world and consumes more gas than Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia combined. Since the early 1990s, Ukraines usage of natural gas as a share of its total energy consumption has increased by 10 percent to comprise for almost half of Ukraines energy usage (Strukova, 2007). Thermal electric power stations, which would include the burning of oil, natural gas, coal, emits nearly 50% of the total pollution caused by stationary sources. Almost 70% of the electrical power is obtained by burning fossil fuel at thermal power stations (Strukova, 2007). This pollution results from the use of outdated technology and the total absence of facilities for the recovery of sulphur and nitrogen oxides (Brody, 2007). Ukraines energy sector contributes about 78% of total domestic emissions of greenhouse gasses for the eastern Mediterranean region (Bank, 2007).

Germany is by a long distance the largest consumer of energy in Europe it is especially reliant on foreign sources of energy in the form of fossil fuels. ‘Germany is the seventh largest consumer of energy in the world,’ (EIA 2013) and because Germany has an insufficient amount of local oil and gas reserves to fuel its economy it imports most if not all of its gas and oil needs. Germany’s central position and size on the European continent ensures that Germany’s relationship with its neighbours is affected to a large degree by this dependence as ‘Oil remains the most significant although declining energy source in Germany, accounting for 32% in 2010.’ (IEA 2012 p.6) Oil is imported to the country through its pipeline infrastructure and ports. Imports mainly come from Russia, Norway, the United Kingdom and Holland. Germany is also a huge consumer of Natural Gas imported from Russia, and Norway through various gas pipeline infrastructures. Because, of Germany’s European Membership and thus its European Energy Community membership its Energy system is deeply interwoven with its European Allies and from outside this framework also with Russia. Germany’s reliance on the latter for a significant portion of its energy needs is a worrying situation for its European allies, most specifically in the Eastern European Countries of Poland and Lithuania. The newly built Nord

In today’s World there is a huge debate going on about the creation of jobs and GDP or environmental issues and clean energy. Approximately 59% of voting Americans think that job creation is more important than the protection of the environment. This number is very alarming considering that there has been several studies conducted showing that our continued use of fossil fuels has been damaging the environment at an alarming rate. In order to fix this problem, a transition from these fossil fuels to cleaner energy is necessary. Clean energy sources include solar power, wind power, hydropower, geothermal energy, or anything else that includes an inexhaustible resource. These sources of energy would effectively produce significantly less