Public Policy Landscape
See also: Renewable energy policyPublic policy has a role to play in renewable energy commercialization because the free market system has some fundamental limitations. As the Stern Review points out:
In a liberalised energy market, investors, operators and consumers should face the full cost of their decisions. But this is not the case in many economies or energy sectors. Many policies distort the market in favour of existing fossil fuel technologies.
The International Solar Energy Society has stated that "historical incentives for the conventional energy resources continue even today to bias markets by burying many of the real societal costs of their use".
Fossil-fuel energy systems have different production, transmission, and end-use costs and characteristics than do renewable energy systems, and new promotional policies are needed to ensure that renewable systems develop as quickly and broadly as is socially desirable.
Lester Brown states that the market "does not incorporate the indirect costs of providing goods or services into prices, it does not value nature's services adequately, and it does not respect the sustainable-yield thresholds of natural systems". It also favors the near term over the long term, thereby showing limited concern for future generations. Tax and subsidy shifting can help overcome these problems.
Read more about this topic: Renewable-energy Economy
Famous quotes containing the words public, policy and/or landscape:
“Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. Do not talk to him about the interests and rights of the human race; that little private business of his for the moment absorbs all his thoughts, and he hopes that public disturbances can be put off to some other time.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“Maybe it’s understandable what a history of failures America’s foreign policy has been. We are, after all, a country full of people who came to America to get away from foreigners. Any prolonged examination of the U.S. government reveals foreign policy to be America’s miniature schnauzer—a noisy but small and useless part of the national household.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“There exists a black kingdom which the eyes of man avoid because its landscape fails signally to flatter them. This darkness, which he imagines he can dispense with in describing the light, is error with its unknown characteristics.... Error is certainty’s constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)