The National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE) has published an article on renewable energy written by Georgy Ermolenko, head of the Center for the Development of Renewable Energy Sources at the Institute of Energy at the Higher School of Economics. Here are fragments of this publication (highlights in the text are made by the editors of anekdotig.ru) :
Many consumers in the West are willing to pay more for clean energy because they are concerned about climate change. And this is not a far-fetched problem: the climate on Earth is changing. Over the past thirty years, insurance premiums for disasters caused by climate events have tripled, and the number of uninsured cases has increased by 8-10 times.
This is not only statistics, the layman can see the consequences of warming with his own eyes . In recent years, spruce forests in the Moscow region have been affected by a bug. Why did he show up here? Because it became warmer, there were conditions for its distribution.
[..]
In many developed countries, a new culture of environmental management has developed, this is a whole philosophy, there are entire sections of the population who vote for this and are ready to pay for the preservation of the environment. Ultimately, everything depends on political will - such as was shown in Western countries.
Today, renewable energy is a mature global industry . If earlier it developed in the rich countries of Europe and in the USA, today the Asia-Pacific region has caught up with them in terms of investment. In 2014, investments amounted to $139 billion and $131 billion, respectively. Ten years ago, no one expected the market to develop so rapidly. China then was on the margins, and now it has taken the lead, overtaking the United States in a number of indicators. And the example of China was picked up by India, today the countries of Latin America and Africa are also actively developing renewable energy.
Renewable energy cannot be compared with traditional energy in terms of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The main claims to wind, solar and other installations, as a rule, are of a different nature.
Thus, the main negative impact of wind turbines is associated with noise and flicker effects from a rotating rotor. But this impact is minor and can be eliminated. If you put a large installation at a distance of 350 meters from the dwelling, then the noise will be the same as from a car driving 500 meters from this room. And if everything is planned correctly, then the noise will be no more than the background noise in the countryside at night. Talk that installations harm animals is also exaggerated. Cows, for example, graze beautifully next to windmills. As for birds, 550 million individuals per year die from collision with buildings, 100 million die on power lines and from cats, and less than 30 thousand die on windmills. This is incomparable damage. The same applies to solar power plants.
[..]
In Russia, there is centralized energy supply only in a third of the country's territory, and in the rest of the territory, mainly beyond the Urals, where millions of people live, it is not - and this is a huge field for the development of renewable energy. There is now a very high dependence on diesel fuel, real tariffs can reach up to 150 rubles per kilowatt-hour, and the consumer pays a maximum of 7 rubles, the rest is subsidized by the state. Budget expenditures amount to hundreds of billions of rubles annually. That is, renewable energy in these areas can be economically competitive today and can reduce the burden on the budget .
[..]
The development of renewable energy does not mean that Russia should abandon both the atom and oil, gas and coal, this is a false opposition. We have a country with large reserves of fossil hydrocarbons, but the resource potential of renewable energy is very high. Therefore, the principle of rational addition to traditional and renewable energy should be implemented. Gas, oil and coal have another equally effective application - deep processing: gas chemistry, petrochemistry, coal chemistry. This is the production of structural, building and other materials, household and technical plastics, medicines and perfumes, chemicals and pigments, solvents and hardeners, and so on. So gas workers, oil workers and coal miners will not be left without bread.
We have every reason to bring the renewable energy industry in order, to make it really modern and efficient.
See also anekdotig:
- Newsletter: Philippine Catholic Leaders Demand Government Switch to Renewable Energy ( August 19, 2015)
- News: " Thailand will generate more solar energy than all of Southeast Asia " (August 3, 2015)
- Newsletter: " Peru will provide free solar energy to 2 million of the country's poorest citizens " (July 29, 2015)
- Newsletter: “ During a strong wind in Denmark, all the necessary electricity is produced by windmills ” (July 14, 2015)
- Article: " Global warming on Earth: statistics and results of 2014 ".