Renewable Energy Hold the Key to Our Energy Needs: Eco20/20

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Renewable Energy Hold the Key to Our Energy Needs

Sudhanshu Chopra
MBA Candidate '10
Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto

In India there is a popular saying "If you realize and regret your mistakes then you are human, if you realize and repeat mistakes then you are evil". Melting of Himalayan glaciers, rise in the sea level, global warming, I think the whole world has turned evil by turning their back to these problems.

Alternate resources of energy are a key to minimize these problems if not alleviate them for ever. I worked for four years in New Delhi, India for a compressed natural gas retailer and observed that the pollution level in New Delhi has reduced a lot after adoption of CNG as a fuel for public transport.

Recent increase in the oil prices has made people to worry about the fuel efficiency of vehicles and this has led them to choose smaller cars as compared to big SUV's. The fuel consumed per capita can be reduced by pumping more two seat cars in the market or by promoting compact electric cars. Further change in trend can be brought by change in policy shift in availability of fuel, taxes should be increased to discourage the usage of private vehicles and increase the use of public transport run on electricity.

To increase the production of electricity, alternate resources of energy should be explored such as wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal, bio-gas and bio-diesel. The cost incurred to establish these resources should be added as renewable energy tax to the existing price of fuel.

Wind and Solar energy in particular hold the key to our energy problems, advances in technology has made it possible and economically viable to utilize these resources to their best potential. Efforts should be made to invest more in the research and development of these technologies to provide a clean environment to our future generation.

Energy is there but it changes form. We should work towards developing cleaner sources of energy without bringing any change to the beauty of mother earth.