Discuss the impact of advancements in renewable energy technologies on the direction of energy policy of the United Kingdom?
Technological change plays a very important role in case of renewable energy resources in UK. The globally changing climate, due to over emission in the carbon dioxide from transport pollution, pollution from the industrial industry causes a big challenge in the economic development of the country. There actually ample amount of effort should be limiting the concentration of the gas. It results a dramatic change in the economic performance of UK, the wellbeing of the people of the economy and the ecosystem of the country (Altan, 2010).
In these regards the technological advances as well as the big technical changes play a very important role. The new up gradation in the technical changes enables us to promote the new renewable energy offerings, the facilitation of new kind of energy accesses. This assures environmental prosperity, benefits for the human health. Impact on employment in the macroeconomic aspect has been positively gets affected. The competitiveness of the market which is affected also, is nothing but the microeconomic phenomenon. But what happens in reality is that the rapid economic extension as well as adoption and diffusion of the renewable resources energies are being hindered by various forces. Here we majorly put on emphasis on the different kind of market failures, different barrier from unfavorable price mechanism. The risk along with high cost also plays a crucial role (Birchfield & Duffield, 2011).
Here strength weakness opportunities and threats analysis plays a very important role. To know the issues further in detail we need to emphasize first on this methodological tool. It is majorly used as a planning method in a well structured manner. A SWOT analysis is mainly used in case of a product or person, or place or industry. Here we majorly put on emphasis on the issue on the context of United Kingdom’s research on the renewable resources. The major objective of using this tool in our analysis involves the factors internal as well as external which are either favorable or unfavorable. The degree by which the internal environment and the external environment matches with each other, is presented by the concept named strategic fit. If we want to analyse the method more specifically (Chick, 2007), we can express the terms as follows:
Strength: It is a very essential part of the process that provides an advantage over others
Weakness: This part of the process majorly provides the disadvantages relative to others (Heffron, 2013).
Opportunities: Elements that exploits the project’s advantages (Helm, 2002)
Threats: elements which aggravates the troubles in the project
Here in the initial stage the decision makers that is here in this case the policy makers of the country should consider whether the objective is attainable or not.
Different government regulations as well as new interventions regarding the environmental policies are required for implementation which helps to control such environmental degradation due to global emission of carbon dioxide causing global warming. One of them is the current economic policy of the United Kingdom. It has been implemented from the year of 2007 (Jacobs, 2012).
It is mostly of four types.
It majorly includes the following points.
It has been observed from the mid 1990s, that among the electricity energy sector, the hydroelectricity power started to contribute an ample amount as another energy generating factor. Renewable energy sources contributed the 6.7 per cent of the electricity generating factor. In the mid 2011, another renewable energy like wind energy started to acquire the place in the energy sector. It has growing future in the United Kingdom. In the year of 2005, the energy has been used in the various sector are as under. In the transport sector it is 35 per cent. In case of space heating it is near about 26 per cent. In the industrial sector 10 per cent of the total energy has been used. Water heating uses 8 per cent and the lightening cause’s use of 6 per cent. As the population increases affluently it causes affecting the fuel usage in ample amount so that the economic usage matters a lot to t6he contribution of the renewable energy sector (Mitchell, Watson & Whiting, n.d.).
It can be divided into some phases.
1980s market liberalization: In the years during 1980s to 1990s, the government policy was one of the major links of market liberalization between the privatized state controlled energy companies and the British department of energy. It has deregulated the government control over the energy market. Now th3e energy policy has a very little power to influence the overall operation of the energy market. These are mainly done now by taxation, subsidy, different controls of planning, incentives, grants and the funds accumulated for further research.
Early 2000s- Climate Change rises up the agenda: It has been jointly taken decision by United Kingdom with that of other 170 nations to minimize the emission of the carbon dioxide through the convenient energy policy undertaken by the UK government. It has been measured that in the year of 2003 the green house gas emission was 4 per cent for UK. It has been targeted to reduce the carbon emission by the year 2050. Here the carbon trading issue has been emerged. The emission due to road transport hes been tried to control through banding of Vehicle Excise Duty. It has been decided to go through a new laboratory test for each new vehicle. The potentiality of emission of carbon dioxide through new vehicles has been emerged. The government of United Kingdom has also planned a project for producing energy from renewable resources like natural gas. It would be produced through capturing carbon through seawater (Rutledge & Wright, 1993).
The government of UK has published a paper named “Our energy future-creating a low carbon economy”, in the year 2003. It is also called the white paper on energy. This was the first so called a modern energy policy. The paper mostly emphasized in the limiting forces of the carbon dioxide emission that is mostly responsible for the economic demand. The white paper mostly focused on analyzing the problems than responding to the various clauses of the policies (Strachan, 2011).
The various researches have been done on these kinds of issues. It mainly focused on the environmental friendly techniques through which the induced improvement in the environment can be noticed. It allows market based policies like tradable permits, technological standard (Surrey, 1994).
It mostly aim to the innovation through technological up gradation, and boosts up the technical utilization. The environmental policy regimes in the industry specific sectors can be divided s the approaches differ. One approach is market based. It mostly deals with the market signals, market incentives etc. Another approach is command and control based. It mostly deals with the performance standards and directives.
Here these kinds of policies implied the taxes imposed on carbon trading. The cost effective mitigation measures are provided without any market failure. Through this technology imposing the price on carbon trade emission trading schemes provides incentives dynamically.
It mostly deals with the cost effective policies for renewable energies to save from the market distortion and the socio technical path dependency.
It majorly helps to internalize as well as improvise the technical issues. We should more take care on the research and development schemes for new innovative policies which smoothens the adverse effect of the global climate changes (Toke, 2011).
Competitiveness and international trade: Both of these have identified two hypotheses which are opposite to each other. One is that the increasing rate of imposing various kinds of environmental regulation hinders the growth of the industrial productivity. This is known as pollution haven hypothesis. Another hypothesis named as porter hypothesis mainly depends upon the dynamic competitiveness theory. It says that environmental regulations mains focused on the cost effectiveness so that the cost saving innovations takes place. Thus it affects positively to the social welfare as well as the dynamic behavior of the country. This mostly emphasizes upon the diffusion of technology, the cost of investment the learning by doing procedure. This issue idealized that how good the technological change in the economic sector of UK, induced by the frequent changes in the technical cost. The induced change in the economy are mostly investigates whether the learning by doing or the scale effects can be captured by the technological costs.
Conclusions
Focusing on the technical innovations of the renewable resources, all the research and development regarding the issue of global warming accepted that specific environmental policy is needed to overcome the market failures. Many of the literatures have put on emphasis on the different motivations and requirements of the renewable energy policies. As par the induced innovation hypothesis, policy implementation will be such that the change in the relative prices will be encouraged and thus incentivizing the whole innovation process. The climate friendly technologies adopted by the British policy makers are good for saving their economy from suffering by the environmental degradation. Here we discussed the various energy policies undertaken by the British government. We have explained the technical changes which may enhance the environmental stability minimizing the global warming. By the UK energy policies, which have been discussed above have mainly been implemented to incorporate the technical changes happened over the years.
References
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Chick, M. (2007). Electricity and energy policy in Britain, France and the United States since 1945. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Heffron, R. (2013). The application of contrast explanation to energy policy research: UK nuclear energy policy 2002–2012. Energy Policy, 55, 602-616. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2012.12.046
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