question: Why are we worried about cost when talking about transitioning to green energy sources? Wouldn’t it just pay itself off in the long run?
comment: All sources of energy would pay themselves off. What increased percentage of your paycheck do you want to give to pay for it and what are you prepared to give up in order to go green. It’s more expensive, that’s the reality. Government could help things along by taxing traditional energy sources to the point where green energy is an equivalent cost in which case more people would go green Europeans don’t drive small cars because anyone likes driving small cars. The Government s taxes gasoline so much it costs $9 / gallon (in some places) . If gas was that price in the US, everyone would be driving small cars. The same would be true of electricity
passages: Another area of concern is solvency: financial sustainability of the initiative is vital to its long term success, and the appropriation and allocation of funding can determine the longevity of the SEU itself. Depending on its organizational structure and funding source, the SEU can encounter problems when some of its dedicated funds are re-allocated to fill general obligation gaps in, for instance, the state budget. An example of a sustainable energy focused organization encountering such a difficulty is the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, a third-party demand side management administrator operating in New Jersey. Sustaining a long-term program that seeks to implement transformative change further can encounter difficulties when operated in parallel with shorter-term projects. For example, shorter-term projects can capitalize on "low-hanging fruit" with quick returns, limiting funding allocation to multi-year projects. Support from local government and the possibility of collaborating with other available government programs can substantially increase success.
   In the United States, one of the main problems with purchasing green energy through the electrical grid is the current centralized infrastructure that supplies the consumer’s electricity. This infrastructure has led to increasingly frequent brown outs and black outs, high CO emissions, higher energy costs, and power quality issues. An additional $450 billion will be invested to expand this fledgling system over the next 20 years to meet increasing demand. In addition, this centralized system is now being further overtaxed with the incorporation of renewable energies such as wind, solar, and geothermal energies. Renewable resources, due to the amount of space they require, are often located in remote areas where there is a lower energy demand. The current infrastructure would make transporting this energy to high demand areas, such as urban centers, highly inefficient and in some cases impossible. In addition, despite the amount of renewable energy produced or the economic viability of such technologies only about 20 percent will be able to be incorporated into the grid. To have a more sustainable energy profile, the United States must move towards implementing changes to the electrical grid that will accommodate a mixed-fuel economy.
   The changing price of electricity connected with the fossil fuel price can affect the return time on the investment while the fast changing regulatory panorama increases the uncertainty of the investment and the financial value of it. This can create an unsustainable situation, where investments in renewables projects can happens only when there are subsidies given by the government.
  
  In the specific situation of biogas production, poor management can increase the fugitive emission of greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the environmental benefits of renewable energy generation.
   Has set itself an ambitious target with respect to renewable energy. It wants to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2040. Half of their energy currently (2019) comes from renewable sources, this fact means this target of theirs is probably not being over ambitious at all!
  
  Section::::By country.:United States.
   In 2015 a study was published in "Energy and Environmental Science" that describes a pathway to 100% renewable energy in the United States by 2050 without using biomass. Implementation of this roadmap is regarded as both environmentally and economically feasible and reasonable, as by 2050 it would save about $600 Billion Dollars health costs a year due to reduced air pollution and $3.3 Trillion global warming costs. This would translate in yearly cost savings per head of around $8300 compared to a business as usual pathway. According to that study, barriers that could hamper implementation are neither technical nor economic but social and political, as most people didn't know that benefits from such a transformation far exceeded the costs.
   The committee further stated that since traditional sources of capital for investment in green infrastructure could not provide even half that amount by 2025, there would be a funding gap that needed to be covered by the state budget.
   Ideally, private lenders would provide financing to building-owners to cover upfront cost of clean energy adoption (beyond what is covered by rebates). However, there are capital market inefficiencies and inherent challenges to financing clean energy that have resulted in inadequate investment by private lenders. Some private lenders do offer for clean energy projects, but typically charge interest rates that are relatively high and loan tenors that are short. Such terms make financing a clean energy project unattractive from the end-user’s perspective. To be attractive from the end-user’s perspective, financing terms would be such that the monthly cash flow from clean energy projects would be greater than the monthly payments for the cost of financing. This kind of cash flow structure is only possible with loan terms that match the expected lifetime of the projects savings, and with rates that are commensurate with the risk. Therefore, private capital offered at unfavorable terms (if it is available at all) undercuts the economic attractiveness of the project potential customers or project developers.
   Sinn emphasizes that a condition for the green paradox is that the resource be scarce in the sense that its price will always be higher than the unit extraction and exploration costs combined. He points out that this condition is likely to be satisfied as backstop technologies will at best offer a perfect substitute for electricity, but not for fossil fuels. The prices of coal and crude oil are currently many times higher than the corresponding exploration and extraction costs combined.
  
  Section::::Practicable solutions.
   Despite the numerous advantages offered by on-site renewable energy generation, wastewater utilities are experiencing several difficulties in integrating renewables in their facilities.
  
  From a survey conducted by Beca it emerged that one of the biggest barrier is that energy generation is not core business for wastewater utilities and renewable energy projects come with technical challenges and high initial investment costs. 
   Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is currently conducting an environmental assessment for refurbishment of four operational units at Pickering B.
  
  Section::::Supply options.:Renewables.
  
  As a strategy to cut down greenhouse gas emissions, the Ontario government is planning to phase out coal-fired electricity generating plants and increase the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources as well as promoting strategies to reduce electricity demand through CDM. It is estimated that 30% of Ontario electricity demand will be produced from these sources by 2025. Compared to fossil fuel sources, generating electricity from renewable sources such as water, wind, and biomass has the following advantages:
   An independent 2015 study reviews the EMMA model and comments on the high assumed specific costs for renewable investments.
  
  Section::::Open electricity sector models.:GENESYS.
   For most systems worldwide, existing penetration levels are significantly lower than practical or theoretical maximums; for example, a UK study found that "it is clear that intermittent generation need not compromise electricity system reliability at any level of penetration foreseeable in Britain over the next 20 years, although it may increase costs."
  
  Section::::Penetration.:Maximum penetration limits.
   Pioneering research has suggested that an average of approximately 30% of the money spent on the open market buying CDM credits goes directly to project operating and capital expenditure costs.
  
  Other significant costs include the broker's premium (about 30%, understood to represent the risk of a project not delivering) and the project shareholders' dividend (another 30%). The researchers noted that the sample of projects studied was small, the range of figures was wide and that their methodology of estimating values slightly overstated the average broker's premium.
  
  Section::::Views on the CDM.:Concerns.:The risk of fraud.
   Another advantage of renewable energy production, in specific of biogas from sewage sludge, is the contribution to waste management. In fact the recovery of the chemical energy involves the reduction of the sewage sludge volume. A smaller volume of sewage sludge is cheaper to transport and dispose of, decreasing operational costs.
  
  Moreover, a diversify portfolio of energy source can contribute to a more resilient response in case of energy shortage and grid problems.
  
  Section::::Barriers to on-site renewable energy generation.
   An updated report, posted on the 27th of September 2017, titled "Renewables will be cheaper than coal in the future. Here are the numbers", indicated that a 100% renewables system is competitive with new-build supercritical (ultrasupercritical) coal, which, according to the Jacobs calculations in the report link above, would come in at around A$75(80) per MWh between 2020 and 2050. This projection for supercritical coal is consistent with other studies by the CO2CRC in 2015 (A$80 per MWh) and used by CSIRO in 2017 (A$65–80 per MWh).
  
  Section::::Regional and historical studies.:France.
   Recent testimony in regulatory proceedings show the cost of IGCC to be twice that predicted by Goddell, from $96 to 104/MWhr. That's before addition of carbon capture and sequestration (sequestration has been a mature technology at both Weyburn in Canada (for enhanced oil recovery) and Sleipner in the North Sea at a commercial scale for the past ten years)—capture at a 90% rate is expected to have a $30/MWh additional cost.
   Although most of today’s electricity comes from large, central-station power plants, new technologies offer a range of options for generating electricity nearer to where it is needed, saving on the cost of transmitting and distributing power and improving the overall efficiency and reliability of the system.
   The British electricity system will be capable of operating zero-carbon by 2025, with only renewables and nuclear, and the company, National Grid Electricity System Operator, claims the overall cost of operating the system will be reduced.
  
  Section::::Intermittency and renewable energy.
   A 2015 study uses Calliope to compare the future roles of nuclear power and CSP in South Africa. It finds CSP could be competitive with nuclear by 2030 for baseload and more competitive when producing above baseload. CSP also offers less investment risk, less environmental risk, and other co-benefits. A second 2015 study compares a large number of cost-optimal future power systems for Great Britain. Three generation technologies are tested: renewables, nuclear power, and fossil fuels with and without carbon capture and storage (CCS). The scenarios are assessed on financial cost, emissions reductions, and energy security. Up to 60% of variable renewable capacity is possible with little increase in cost, while higher shares require large-scale storage, imports, and/or dispatchable renewables such as tidal range.
   Although this process could reduce CO emissions from conventional power plants by as much as 80–90%, if combined with increased oil recovery the net savings in carbon emissions may be much less as the total volume of oil and gas used from that field would increase.
  
  Section::::Energy production and distribution.:Electricity distribution.
   "The main concern is to provide answers to tackle the different types of barrier to DER deployment." There is three main types of barriers to the DER deployment which are technology barriers, market barriers, and regulatory barriers. Feem was one of the EU-DEEP partner that was responsible for developing Regulatory Models for the integration of DER. Focusing on FEEM's research, they had work on Demand Response. The main point of the work was to show "how to correlate price patterns to different generation technologies and validation of the three Business Models."
  
  Section::::EU-DEEP Partners.
   Moving towards energy sustainability will require changes not only in the way energy is supplied, but in the way it is used, and reducing the amount of energy required to deliver various goods or services is essential. Opportunities for improvement on the demand side of the energy equation are as rich and diverse as those on the supply side, and often offer significant economic benefits.
   BULLET::::- The U.S. Department of Energy administers a range of energy efficiency tax incentives, and green infrastructure could be integrated into project design to claim the incentive. An example of how this might work is found in Oregon’s Energy Efficiency Construction Credits. In Eugene, Oregon, a new biofuel station built on an abandoned gas station site included a green roof, bioswales and rain gardens. In this case, nearly $250,000 worth of tax credits reduced income and sales tax for the private company that built and operated the project.
   Section::::Understanding the Scale and Complexity of the Energy Challenge.
  
  We face an unprecedented global energy challenge. Demand for energy is projected to double within the next few decades and continue to grow through the end of the century. To meet this ever-growing demand, energy industries of the 21st century need an entirely new infrastructure that produces more energy at a lower cost, uses energy far more efficiently, improves the security of supply by relying more on domestic and stable sources, and produces far fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
   NEMO has been used to explore generation options for the year 2030 under a variety of renewable energy (RE) and abated fossil fuel technology scenarios. A 2012 study investigates the feasibility of a fully renewable system using concentrated solar power (CSP) with thermal storage, windfarms, photovoltaics, existing hydroelectricity, and biofuelled gas turbines. A number of potential systems, which also meet NEM reliability criteria, are identified. The principal challenge is servicing peak demand on winter evenings following overcast days and periods of low wind. A 2014 study investigates three scenarios using coal-fired thermal generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and gas-fired gas turbines with and without capture. These scenarios are compared to the 2012 analysis using fully renewable generation. The study finds that "only under a few, and seemingly unlikely, combinations of costs can any of the fossil fuel scenarios compete economically with 100% renewable electricity in a carbon constrained world". A 2016 study evaluates the incremental costs of increasing renewable energy shares under a range of greenhouse gas caps and carbon prices. The study finds that incremental costs increase linearly from zero to 80% RE and then escalate moderately. The study concludes that this cost escalation is not a sufficient reason to avoid renewables targets of 100%.
  
presuppositions: Green energy is less expensive because transitioning will pay for itself in the long run. Transitioning to green energy sources would pay itself off in the long run so we shouldn't worry about cost.
corrections: Green energy is more expensive even if transitioning pays for itself in the long run.  All sources of energy would pay themselves off but people aren't willing to pay for it upfront.
raw_presuppositions: Green energy is less expensive because transitioning will pay for itself in the long run. Transitioning to green energy sources would pay itself off in the long run so we shouldn't worry about cost. Transitioning to green energy sources would pay itself off in the long run so we shouldn't worry about cost.
raw_corrections: Green energy is more expensive even if transitioning pays for itself in the long run.  All sources of energy would pay themselves off but people aren't willing to pay for it upfront. All sources of energy would pay themselves off but people aren't willing to pay for it upfront.