UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE CHIHUAHUA
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS POLÍTICAS Y SOCIALES
CARRERA: RELACIONES INTERNACIONALES
N A M E : K E M B LY J U D I T H T E L L E S R A M Í R E Z
STUDENT NUMBER: 312642
SEMESTER: 6TH
T E A C H E R : J OAQ U Í N H O RAC I O R O M E R O R O B L E D O
OBJECT 14
D AT E : 0 5 - 0 5 - 2 0 1 9
Energy is central to nearly every major challenge and
opportunity the world faces today.
Be it for jobs, security, climate change, food production or
increasing incomes, access to energy for all is essential.
Working towards this goal is especially important as it
interlinks with other Sustainable Development Goals.
Focusing on universal access to energy, increased energy
efficiency and the increased use of renewable energy
through new economic and job opportunities is crucial to
creating more sustainable and inclusive communities and
resilience to environmental issues like climate change.
At the current time, there are
approximately 3 billion people who lack
access to clean-cooking solutions and are
exposed to dangerous levels of air
pollution. Additionally, slightly less than 1
billion people are functioning without
electricity and 50% of them are found in
Sub-Saharan Africa alone. Fortunately,
progress has been made in the past
decade regarding the use of renewable
electricity from water, solar and wind
power and the ratio of energy used per
unit of GDP is also declining.
However, the challenge is far from being
solved and there needs to be more
access to clean fuel and technology and
more progress needs to be made
regarding integrating renewable energy
into end-use applications in buildings,
transport and industry. Public and private
investments in energy also need to be
increased and there needs to be more
focus on regulatory frameworks and
innovative business models to transform
the world’s energy systems
13% of the global population still lacks access
to modern electricity.
3 billion people rely on wood, coal, charcoal or
animal waste for cooking and heating
Energy is the dominant contributor to climate
change, accounting for around 60 per cent of
total global greenhouse gas emissions.
FACTS Indoor air pollution from using combustible
fuels for household energy caused 4.3 million
deaths in 2012, with women and girls
accounting for 6 out of every 10 of these.
The share of renewable energy in final energy
consumption has reached 17.5% in 2015
Running on 100%
renewable energy (RE)
is not possible.
However, could an
individual country such
as the US or Canada (or
whatever big country)
possibly run almost
completely on RE?
The answer probably is
yes. but, it would entail
a willingness to
undergo widespread
HERE IS WHAT NEEDS TO change and incur great
costs.
HAPPEN:
THE How?
GOVERNM State/federal government policies and
funding has spurred recent growth in the
ENT MUST renewable energy industry. Renewable
Portfolio Standards require that states, by a
certain year, pull set amounts of energy from
COMPLET renewable sources. Tax credits lessen the
cost of green energy generation and allow it
ELY to compete. Renewable Energy Credits have
given individuals and companies ways to
COMMIT profit off personal solar systems by selling
back excess energy to grid and profiting off
TO IT: pollution-saving credits. Policies like these
along with government investment in the
industry must continue to grow.
People already complain about how much
- the government spends/aids the renewable
energy industry with tax credits, claiming it
CHALLEN hurts the free market. If the government
were to lessen, or even just not increase, its
support, it would greatly setback the
GES: industry. Additionally, fully committing to
renewable energy would require the
government to be willing to hurt coal, oil and
gas companies in the energy industry.
CHANGES MUST
OCCUR WITHIN
THE INDUSTRY:
More renewable energy must be created and
readily available. Additionally, renewable energy
prices must drop. Even with the current aid from
the government, regular renewable energy costs
exceed those of energy industry competitors. For
the countries to be permanently powered by just
green energy, generation, storage and
transmission/redistribution costs combined must
be lower than prices incurred by competitors. If
this can change, it will enable RE companies to
have competitive prices.
GENERATION GROWTH,
PRICING DECREASE
New energy generation and
distribution models need to
accompany improvements in
storage technology. Companies
like SolarCity have created a new
model of renewable energy
generation. Solar systems
installed in homes power houses
and allow excess energy to be sold
back to the grid and redistributed
locally. As these systems increase
more total RE becomes available,
and costs associated with
transmission of energy decrease.
The problem is that increases in
energy being redistributed locally
has caused the demand for energy
transmitted from utilities’ large
BETTER METHODS plants to decrease, hurting
utilities’ profits. Finding a way for
the two models to effectively
AND TECHNOLOGY coexist is key for RE to continue to
increase its market share.
STORAGE
Wind energy generation drops when
there is no wind and when there is too
much, plants need to be shut down to
prevent the grid from overloading. Solar
energy, on the other hand, isn’t
available at night. Without storage,
there will always be a need for energy
from other sources. Storage that is cost-
efficient and scalable can help combat
fluctuations in the amount of energy
produced by wind and solar sources.
While technology capable of storage
has been invented, nothing has proven
to be cost-efficient or scalable. When/if
a proper storage method is invented, it
will likely bring huge growth.
If the governments (of all
countries) continues to
work to increase how much
energy the country gets
from green sources,
enormous change is
possible. Improvements in
technology and strategies
to allow for more energy to
be created at lower costs
will be vital. Looking
forward, as electric cars
take hold it will do wonders
in shifting demand from oil
and gas companies to
renewable companies since
home solar systems will be
huge in reducing car-
CONCLUSION operating costs.
The most renewable energy has severe limitations to its
effective use.
Solar and wind are intermittent and have a relatively no energy
density (power per weight) meaning it takes a large production
facility to meet high demand users or grid level ratings.
Hydro and geothermal are available in about 1% of the earth’s
land area.
Bio is borderline efficient because of the protracted processing,
supply chain and facility size.
It should be remembered that technically, none of these are
actually fuels. They are sources of energy that allow us to
create electricity that is then used as the fuel. That means that
the end user has to be able to store and use the electricity, not
the solar, wind, hydro or geo energy source.
This means that all of these “renewable energy resources”
have limited applications - for instance, in cars, aircraft and
ships, they do not provide “fuel” but rather temporary energy
(electrical) storage capability. So the utility of the vehicle is not
dependent on the solar, wind, hydro, etc. but on the battery
storage capacity. For now, that does not have the energy
density sufficient to power aircraft or ships and has not been
