Global Energy Barriers and Impact of Technology, Research Paper Example

Introduction

This essay aims at modern technology impacts on non-renewable energy sources uses and advancement brought by these technologies to use these limited energy sources in the country. The paper examines barriers to economic growth of Germany due to lack of energy sources and finally figures out how the country has overcome this issue.

Analysis

The technologies of nonrenewable energy have a tremendous potential within Germany and the realization of the potential can be done at the costs that are reasonable. It has been shown by the market research that a large number of customers are likely to purchase nonrenewable power irrespective of taking into consideration greater cost of that than the conventional kind of power. But both experiences well as the economic theory give the indication of significant base of the market as well as failures of the market which are going to put a limit to the development of the renewable kind of technology until and unless there is the enactment of special measures of policy for the encouragement of that development (Keles, 2001).

Economies of scale

In the Germany bulk of the technologies of nonrenewable energy is manufactured in the assembly lines where the reduction of costs is possible due to mass production. And the time of the later part of the 1990s, the cost of manufacturing of the photovoltaic’s had reduced by nearly 20% to 25% for every doubling bit of volume of production (Lehr, 2012). But obviously during the production of a relatively less number of units, there are chances that the prices are going to remain at higher. As a result of this a very less demand is present which ultimately needs to low volumes of production. This very problem of chicken-and-egg is very difficult in the case of technologies having long life spans. But the scaling up of the manufacturing of the technologies that are new walls of the ability of the quick creation of problems of its own like the scarcity of skilled labor and bottlenecks within the supply parts (Nikogosian, 2012).

In comparison to the nonrenewable with respect to the subsidies of the government, technologies of the fossil fuels and the nuclear technologies all enjoy a tremendous advantage with respect to research and the development area. Moreover besides receiving subsidies in favor of development and research, a much lower tax burden is possessed by the conventional kinds of technologies of generation. Deduction of the expenditures of the fuel is possible from the taxable income but there are only a few nonrenewable that actually benefit from this very reduction, because and most are not using the fuels supplied by the market. Taxes on property and income are much higher in the case of renewable that need large investment of capital but are having lower operating expenses as well as low fuel (Kalantzis, 2013).

Impact on Economic Growth of Germany

Most of the benefits associated with the nonrenewable that was described previously are the public benefits that are applicable to one and all irrespective we just turned as public goods by the economists. For an instance the ones choosing nonrenewable help in the reduction of pollution for everyone and also provide a beneficial of environment to one and all of the public. Any customer that desire of thing much for the electricity from the nonrenewable to have the ability of breathing the exact same air as his neighbor that are not paying as much (Dunford, 2013).

Diversity of fuel, employment, the stability of price as well as various other economic benefits in an indirect way for the nonrenewable are accrued in favor of the society in its totality. For an instance in the case of the large industrial customer, a greater sense is made for risking the movement to a different region as a response to an increase in the prices of the fuel instead of being more for buying the nonrenewable for stabilization of the prices within the region concerned. This strategy has the potential of playing to the benefit of the firm individually; it is very much likely that the long-term economic competitiveness of the region would be hurt as a result (Dunford, 2013).

The bottom-line of the German companies has very little effect from the research and development that is said to produce the benefits of the society. This is especially valued much less in the markets that are restructured. It is indicated by some of the research that the people are going to desire of paying much more in case of the public benefits than it is suggested by the economic theory. But the investment within the technologies where the bulk of the payback does not accrue to the individual responsible for making the investment is always going to the mess than the investment made for the society that is optimal. Nearly 66% of the reduced electricity is utilized by the customers that are industrial or commercial. While on one hand it is regarded that some of the customers are going to make much more payments from the cleanest sources of electricity, many are not likely to do so (Dunford, 2013).

It is due to these reasons that the nonrenewable are going to be unsuccessful in competing upon a level playing field with this generation that is conventional until and unless there is the adoption of Mueller policies for internalizing the costs pertaining to the public for these sources of fossil fuels.

Barriers to economic growth of Germany with respect nonrenewable energy sources

In Germany, the associated barriers and hurdles can be categorized into four different categories. One category is the barriers of commercialization that the new technologies face by means of competing with the technologies that are mature. The second is the distortion of price from the existing subsidies as well as the burdens of tax that are unequal among the renewable sources of energy and other different sources of energy. The market barriers constitute the fourth of the category of hurdle. They include insufficient information, insufficient access to the capital, the split incentives among the tenants and the owners and the high costs of transaction for the purpose of making the small amount of purchases (Flinkerbusch, 2010).

For being able to compete against the mature fossil fuel and also the nuclear technologies two very important barriers against commercialization must be overcome by the nonrenewable energy which are the underdeveloped infrastructure as well as the scarcity of economies of scale.

The development of new resources that are nonrenewable country needs huge investments initially for the purpose of constructing the infrastructure. It is these investments that actually help in incrementing the cost of providing the renewable electricity especially at the time of the early days. Some of these are inclusive of prospecting. It is the duty of the developers in finding sites that are publicly acceptable and also have good resources along with access to the lines of transmission. The wind sites can potentially need monitoring for several years for the determination of their suitability (Keller, 2010).

In general the issues of permitting for the technologies of conventional energy are in general understood well and the standards as well as the processes for the review are also behind well and proper. In comparison the nonrenewable is more often than not consisting of the new kinds of issues and the impacts of the ecosystem. The standards as well continue to be developed.

Insufficient information might be possessed by the customers for making choices in an informed manner. The bulk of the utilities provides very little are absolutely nil information regarding the emissions of them or the new fuel that is used by them. Simply because of the reason that the renewable technologies are comparatively new, there is zero knowledge associated with most of the customers regarding them. For instance, a large number of customers might be of the opinion that the wind technologies and the solar technology are absolutely unreliable because of the fact that they have availability as long as when the sun is shining and the wind is continuously blowing. They are not likely to be aware that the above kind of intermittent technologies has the ability of being highly reliable when used in combination with the other different options (Kalantzis, 2013)

The industries and the commercial customers are not really too much familiar in general with the nonrenewable and are faced with the institutional barriers when they are purchasing the nonrenewable. The managers of industrial energy are only given training for finding solutions that are of the low-cost. Managers of the industrial environment look for the ways of reduction in the pollution in-house and are not likely considering the pollution in association with the purchase of electricity (Keller, 2010).

What is more is that the local companies of electricity might even be not that familiar after all with all the nonrenewable. The bulk of the utilities has not made a study on the way in which the renewable resources and I need to fit within their systems or the available local resources.

The projects of nonrenewable are in general small and therefore possess resources that are less than a large company of generation.

The transaction costs of smaller projects are actually very high at a variety of stages during the cycle of development. For an instance the costs incurred to the financial institutions in the evaluation of worthiness of credit of most of the projects that are small a much higher than in case of that of a single project that is large (Nikogosian, 2012).

The developers of the nonrenewable as well as the customers might have the difficulty in obtaining the financing at as much lower rates as they might be available for the facilities of conventional energy. It is more likely that the nonrenewable may also be charged with higher costs of transmission in comparison to the conventional technologies are even might be subjected to grid policies that are discriminatory.

Modern German Technologies to promote nonrenewable energy source utilization

Stable domestic market with the international benefits: The consumers of the German companies in the international community have benefits pertaining to them from a domestic market that is very much suitable for the products that are efficient in energy. The continuity of the market carries on providing the reliability of planning for the companies (Dunford, 2013).

Refrigeration: The technology of refrigeration is inherent in many of the processes of production and logistics and is utilized in a widespread manner within industry and trade.

Compressed Air: It is the German companies that are responsible for the manufacturing of the total range of the technologies in compressed air starting from the small compressors for the enterprises that are of small size and medium sized extending to the compound compressed air systems that consume power the in order of megawatts (Keller, 2010).

Encouragement of modern technologies to use nonrenewable efficiently

Previously in the past the individuals possessed to absolutely no choice regarding the electricity sources. But none the less now the deregulation of electricity has gone on to open the markets for making a large number of choices available to the customers. The companies from startup in Germany have made the communication of the benefits of the nonrenewable towards the customers for being able to persuade them for switching from the sources of energy that are traditional to the new ones. The public education has continued to play a critical part of the market once it is functioning in its totality if there is any chance that the nonrenewable are going to have any success (Langniß, 2009).

German companies have considered installation, operation and maintenance as the main assets of modern technology practices to utilize nonrenewable resources efficiently. Training is imparted to the workers for the installation, operation as well as maintenance of the new technologies at work and also for growing and the transportation of the biomass fuels. There are some nonrenewable that require the experience of operating within the climactic conditions of the particular region prior to the optimization of performance.

Conclusion

With high levels of price of energy and the sources of energy which are actually on the increase along with becoming more and rarer, prosperity as well as the competitiveness is increasingly dependent on the ability that Germany has for using energy in as much efficient manner as it is possible for the country.

All in Germany has all set to become a world leader in energy efficiency. It has been a very long time since the word “made in Germany” has been associated with products of very high quality. Moreover, their products now are as much efficient in energy as they are good in quality.

Possible considerations and objectives

Being the manager of a multinational corporation I would like to propose some considerations and objectives that can help a corporation to escape from the issues of non-renewable energy scarcity. The primary objective of the corporation shall be to reduce their dependence on non-renewable energy sources. They need to use other energy resources like solar energy instead of nonrenewable energy. But they also have to find methods to increase efficiency by reducing high cost incurred towards other sources of energy. Business must be able to compete commercially in the global market by solely using renewable energy sources.

One possible method that can be depended on for meeting demand for energy throughout the world is to generate power from renewable sources of energy like wind turbines, solar power, photovoltaic cells etc. These methods must be able to meet at least 50% of the energy demands of the world by 2050. Another method that can be adopted by companies is to depend on hydrocarbons for petroleum fuels for hydrocarbons are clean fuels with increased fuel efficiency and zero emission. Alternative fuels like compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, liquefied natural gas, methanol, propane, photovoltaic solar cell, hydrogen fuel or electricity is to be used by industries than energy produced from nonrenewable energy sources. Innovative technologies need to be developed for with completely new technologies that are cost effective and widespread globally. These technologies must be able to fill the enormous gap caused by petroleum exhaustion.

References

Dunford, M. (2013). Geographical interdependence, international trade and economic dynamics: The Chinese and German solar energy industries. . European Urban & Regional Studies; , 9-67.

Flinkerbusch, K. (2010). Cost reduction potentials in the German market for balancing power . Energy Policy; , 88-90.

Kalantzis, F. G. (2013). Analyzing the impact of futures trading on spot price volatility: Evidence from the spot electricity market in France and Germany. . Energy Economics; , 88-90.

Keles, D. (2001). The development of the German energy market until 2030—A critical survey of selected scenarios. Energy Policy , 77.

Keller, A. (2010). Competition effects of mergers: An event study of the German electricity market . Energy Policy , 8-78.

Langniß, O. (2009). Advanced mechanisms for the promotion of renewable energy—Models for the future evolution of the German Renewable Energy Act . Energy Policy , 80-90.

Lehr, U. (2012). Green jobs? Economic impacts of renewable energy in Germany. . Energy Policy; 88-89.

Nikogosian, V. (2012). The impact of ownership on price-setting in retail-energy markets—The German case. . Energy Policy; , 9-19.