Renewable and Natural Resources

Renewable and Natural Resources

Introduction

In modern time, the energy that is used to run our appliances is mostly based on electricity. Electricity is one of the most important energy that is using currently. The major issue is that today we are producing electricity by using non-renewable resources, which are depleting with the increase in household consumption. Moreover, the consumption of these non-renewable resources is also increasing the air pollution. This paper is based on the scenario based on the coal fired power plants in Texas. The scenario describes the effects on the consumers if we switch from using non-renewable to renewable resource to produce electricity; and furthermore, imposing and recovering all the external cost from the society.

Discussion

Using Renewable resource in Texas has both positive and negative effect on internalizing the external cost to society. If costs of implementing the renewable cost on consumer in Texas have more burden on consumers in the short run but have many positive affect in the long run that we will discuss below. On the portal independent green Ecoage is given a ranking of cost per kWh of different sources of renewable energy in Texas. They range from hydro (the cheapest), wind energy, the combustion of RDF and biomass, photovoltaic (the most expensive, at least with current technology). Of course the list can be seen, correctly, that the dimensional aspect is extremely important in terms of unit cost: large hydro are cheaper than smaller ones and these, in turn, are more favorable than the mini power plants that use streams and rivers (which, however, are those truly within the reach of companies and private).

Research and development (R&D) in renewable energy has been severely hampered in many nations by assigning a tiny fraction of the budgets on energy, with conventional energy sources that continue to carve the lion's share. According to the International Energy Agency, only 7.7% of public support of R&D went to the Renewable Energy 1987 to 2002.

Nonrenewable resource models have been criticized because little empirical support exists for the Hotelling rule and in part because, as Matthias Ruth suggested, the model does not account for individual firm characteristics. Renewable resource models have been criticized for their inability to provide meaningful advice to resource managers, as well as for how resource economics values the benefits provided by natural resources. Renewable resource models vary according to the biological characteristics of the resource. For instance, biomass stock models for fisheries are a function of species population, carrying capacity, and growth rates. However, growth rates, selling price, and efficiencies of fishing operations, as well as other biological factors, are typically considered exogenous in calculating the optimal harvest for renewable resources; because of their noninclusion, the applicability of the models for use by resource managers is limited (Greenberg, 2006).

Researchers proposed that renewable resource ecosystems not only yield goods through their harvest but, if left in place, provide services as well, such as erosion control or water catchments. In choosing an optimal extraction path, the costs of ...