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Renewable Energy and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The United States Department of Energy has a lot in the works these days, fueled by the priorities of President Barack Obama. If the President has his way, the United States will make history by going from being one of the largest importers of foreign oil to being one of the largest exporters of renewable energy. In addition to reducing or eliminating America’s economic reliance on foreign fuel sources and fostering an export opportunity that would boost the overall American economy and stock market, the shift to renewable energy would have a positive environmental impact, reducing oil and coal energy air emissions. And finally, the shift will support the domestic energy industry specifically, by investing in American technology and creating jobs in the energy field, ultimately strengthening the United States energy market. The government, and in particular, the Department of Energy, is poised to facilitate this shift in our primary energy sources. The shift starts with the regulations rolled out on February 17Th, 2009 in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
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The Cost of Reneweable Energy
What is the cost of renewable energy?
This is a trick question. Renewable energy, by definition, is free, because it uses unlimited energy sources, such as water, solar, and wind. No matter how much wind we convert to electricity, there will always be more wind. Wind is free to use and can be found in abundance. Converting wind to electricity by way of an electrical generator, on the other hand, requires research, technology, equipment, and upkeep. These cost money, and the investment in renewable energy is often cost-prohibitive. As a result, renewable energy is rarely used by today’s consumers in the residential sector. The renewable energy industry in the United States is growing, however, with incentives offered by the government and projects supported by the Department of Energy. Renewable energy is making history.
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Harnessing Wind Energy in the 21st Century
Wind energy has come a long way since the old-fashioned Dutch farm windmills. Wind can be an incredibly powerful force, strong enough to rip shingles off of a roof or even an entire roof off of a house, to which any Florida, Texas, or New Orleans insurance company will attest. Wind, then, has the potential to take the place of fossil fuels as a primary energy source. The trick to harnessing wind energy is in converting wind to useful mechanical energy or electricity via turbines, which are large, rotating blades. A turbine is either connected to a drive chain that operates machinery, in the case of mechanical energy, or to an electrical generator, in the case of electricity. Though modern turbines are similar to the windmills of old, they are more efficient, and thanks to innovations in the mechanical technology, wind energy is much less expensive than it used to be.
The beauty of wind energy is that it is renewable, meaning that using wind does not deplete the resource. Wind will always be available. Also, wind energy is clean; it does not pollute. So why has wind energy not replaced coal and oil as a primary energy source? Unfortunately, according to the Wind Energy Development Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement issued by the U.S. Department of Energy and Bureau of Land Management (http://windeis.anl.gov/), up-front costs of wind power exceed those of the more common fossil-fuel energy generators. Some other issues with wind power include its unpredictability and its geographic proximity to end users of the energy, meaning that the energy must be transferred over distances. However, because wind is free, while fossil fuels are expensive, the long-term costs of wind energy are more attractive than those of fossil fuels, despite these challenges. As a result, and due to a government push for renewable energy in the United States that includes a Production Tax Credit in some areas, wind farms are becoming more common.
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