Energy - the Impact of Fossil Fuels on the Environment

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Challenges: Alternative energies depend on seasonal harvests of crops... One disadvantage with renewable energy is that it is difficult to generate the quantities of electricity that are as large as those produced by traditional fossil fuel generators. Shifting to renewable energy will result in a significant “energy sprawl” that will pose challenges for the conservation of biodiversity. Hard to extract only with technology-money! Large areas required/ unable to produced in large quintities/ vulnerable to weather/not available in all areas/ high development cost

Policies

- TAXES Carbon Tax: A tax on fossil fuels in proportion to their carbon content. For most uses of fuels (with feedstock uses as an exception) this is equivalent to a tax on CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

- Emissions Permit: A document entitling the owner to emit one unit of pollution (where a unit is defined by the permit). From an economic and legal perspective, a permit assigns a property right—the right to emit a specified amount of pollution—to the owner of the permit.

- AGREEMENTS INTERNATIONAL- Kyoto Protocol

- “Hybrid” Policy: In this paper, an environmental regulatory policy that combines features of a permit (i.e., quantity-based) system with those of a tax (i.e., price- based) system.

- Marginal Cost of Emissions Reduction (also referred to as Marginal Cost of Abatement): The cost incurred by a firm to reduce (or abate) its current pollution level by one additional unit (termed the “marginal unit”).

- partenrships 2) Partnership with milk farmers in UK- carbon footprint cpmes from milk-changes in supply chain- the lorry that brings the animal feed comes only 1 not 3 times.

https://www.studentenergy.org/topics