Renewable energy integration is perhaps one of the most pressing issues facing our current economy. As the government seeks to pump money into the renewable energy sector in order to reduce dependence on foreign oil as well as lower the nation's CO2 emissions, there is much debate, not only in Washington but across the country, as to the benefits of this move. Some people cite the expensive nature of the new technologies as opposed to the relatively cheap methods for getting coal and oil. Others say that making this move will cut jobs in an already tough economy. There are clear divisions, but it is clear that renewable energy is the way of the future.

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Oil is the primary energy source in the world. Over the last one hundred years, oil has grown to be a major facet of the world economy. The simple fact, however, is that there is a finite amount of oil in the world. As production increases, the supply will inevitably decrease. This is represented in the following graph, which estimates both crude oil supply and demand until 2016.

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It is clear from this graph that production is soaring to meet a rising global demand, all the while known crude oil reserves are quickly diminishing. The implication of this, that costs will rise, is clear in the following graph. It depicts the cost of producing each barrel of oil from 1981 to 2006. While the cost remains relatively constant from 1986 to 2002, there is a clear rise following that year. It can be extrapolated from this data that the costs will continue to rise, and that assumption is supported by the previous graph.

By analyzing these two graphs, it is clear that oil in general is going to get more expensive over the course of the coming years. As the supply further dwindles, prices will continue to rise, resulting in a very costly resource. Oil, however, is not the only major source of energy in the world. Coal has historically been a major resource, and the United States still relies to a great deal on coal.

Coal is very plentiful in the United States, and is increasingly becoming relied on as a cheap energy source. Statistics released from the US government showed that in 1980, just over 800 million short tons of coal were produced in the United States. However, in 2007, just under 1200 million short tons of coal were produced in the United States. This spike in production coincides with a spike in price. Coal in the Appalachian area, one of the most productive coal producing regions in the country, saw a spike in price that left the price per ton at the end of 2008 nearly triple the price per ton in 2007. One of the effects of coal mining that is hard to monetize is the environmental cost of modern coal mining methods. Mountaintop removal, the most common method in many areas today, is very destructive. The impacts of this, from loss of habitat to contamination of groundwater, can be impossible to monetize.

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According to the US Commerce Department, for every $1 million of federal spending, nearly 17 jobs are created in the green sector. This is over 4 times the number of jobs created in the oil and natural gas sector. From this data, it is clear that federal spending on renewable energy is vastly more beneficial for the economy than spending on oil and natural gas. All told, renewable energy is a multi-billion dollar sector of our economy.

As the data clearly indicates, fossil fuels are on the decline. While cheap and plentiful, it is known even by oil companies that oil supplies will run out this century. And while other fossil fuels are plentiful, such as coal and natural gas, many methods of retrieving these resources are destructive and negatively impact the environment a great deal. The costs of such destruction, while great, cannot be monetized to add to the cheap nature of these fuels. It is clear that renewable energy sources, especially with the addition of government funding, are beneficial to the US economy in job creation as well as research and manufacturing, accounting for hundreds of thousands of American jobs, jobs that are not dependent on foreign nations or resources. Renewable energy sources are key to the future of the US, creating more jobs in the United States as well as reducing our nation's dependence on foreign nations.

Scott Reily  

Bibliography

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