Initiatives For Alternative Energy Sources

It is two years now since the Kyoto protocol on Global Warming was ratified by over 140 nations. Under the protocol, 35 industrially advanced nations voluntarily agreed to cut down their carbon emissions by 2012. This was a landmark international agreement in the history of cooperation of nations – not withstanding the refusal of USA and Australia to join the other nations. Sadly a review of the actual achievements made by most of these nations in reduction of carbon emissions and development of alternative energy sources is not very heartening. There could be many reasons for this situation.

There is a general awareness of the dangers of global warming and agreement on the need to reduce carbon emissions. However, a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would harm the commercial interests of oil, gas and coal industries and most of them endeavor in every possible way to sabotage the policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In many of the countries these industries have used their money power to promote disinformation campaigns, to promote political lobbies to raise road-blocks for the governments in one manner or the other. It is commonly believed that even the refusal of the United States to sign Kyoto Protocol and its subsequent policy decisions on this issue have been largely due to the lobbying of these industries.


It is important to remember that most of the industrially advanced nations that are signatories to the Kyoto have democratically elected governments and their constitutions require general elections to be held at four or five year intervals. This means at least two consecutive governments must formulate and vigorously pursue policies that will get the people and the industries to actively join in combating global warming. Major initiatives in this direction on governmental level require large financial outlays and tightening of belts all around. Many decisions are involved which cause short term hardships to certain segments of the society. Such decisions make slow progress in the climate of political compromises essential in an elected government; this situation is exploited by certain lobby groups as mentioned above. Consider the following:

A large proportion – almost a third – of UK’s carbon emission is contributed by its power sector; and its carbon emission has gone up by about 30% over the last eight years. Serious concerns are being expressed whether the UK government’s target of a 26-32% cut in emissions by 2020 can be met. WWF report points at the “woefully inadequate” policies of the UK government in this direction.

Norwegian greenhouse gas emissions rose by 8.5 percent from 1990 to 2005. …… The main reason why emissions are continuing to increase is our reliance on fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas.

IPCC reports have amply illustrated the disasters we are facing unless our reliance on fossil fuels is cut down drastically. It is essential for the world community to make serious concerted efforts to dissuade continued use of fossil fuels by legislative and revenue measures and promote development of more energy efficient equipments and renewable alternative energy sources

About the Author

The author, S. N. Phadke, is a retired electrical/electronics engineer. Among the many subjects in which he has a keen interest, environment and alternative energy sources is one. He has been writing blogs on matters related to energy matters on blogger regularly. His URL is snphadke-energytalk.blogspot.com. He also has been actively writing articles on ezinearticles.com on various topics and his URL is ezinearticles.com/?expert=S_Phadke He can be contacted at snphadke@gmail.com

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by: environment Total views: 10 Word Count: 523 Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2008 Time: 5:52 AM 0 comments