My civic issues blog this semester is going to be on the environment focused on the subcategory of energy. With that being said, let me dive right in. We are in the midst of an energy crisis.

Current Energy Crisis

According to Forbes, crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, and coal are all skyrocketing in price. We are all feeling the effects of these increases in gas prices, and overall inflation in our country. This is not just a national problem. Europe has it even worse with electricity prices quintupling and natural gas prices even higher than the US.

Source: Bloomberg

There are a multitude of causes for these skyrocketing prices including recovery from the pandemic, the interconnectedness of the natural gas markets and, most importantly, the signs of energy price volatility during the energy transition away from fossil fuels. (Brookings)

When I say, “we are in the midst of an energy crisis,” I am not only talking about price increases in the past year, but our continued reliance on nonrenewable energy resources worldwide. According to the US Energy Information Admiration, renewable energy resources accounted for about 12.6% of US energy consumption and about 19.8% of electricity generation. Not only are nonrenewable resources eventually going to run out, but burning of coal, natural gas, crude oil, and other nonrenewable resources damages our environment causing global warming.

We are already feeling the effects of climate change and according to many scientists we are reaching the limits of being able to reverse its effects. There is a reason governments are pushing renewable energy resources, but are renewables ready yet?

Source: McMurry Univeristy

Are Renewables Ready?

Economist Ed Yardeni does not think they are ready: “Renewables aren’t ready for prime time. So instead of a smooth transition, the rush to eliminate fossil fuels is causing their prices to soar and disrupting the overall supply of energy.”

Yardeni might be right. After all, look how little of our energy consumption is from renewable resources. Maybe we just do not have the technology to meet our energy needs with renewables sufficiently.

But maybe he is wrong. Do we not have widespread renewable energy usage because our world needs the encouragement of energy price increases to change its ways and better the environment.

I do not know the right answer. I lean more toward agreeing with Yardeni, that renewables are simply not ready yet. That they are too expensive, and we need more breakthroughs to make a smooth transition. I believe if they were already good enough, we would have implemented them at a larger scale than what is already being done.

If you tend to believe Yardeni is wrong and that we need price hikes to encourage renewable energy, one thing to consider is that price hikes would disproportionately affect the lower classes in our society. Maybe these effects do not matter if the alternative is destroying our planet, but they are still important factors in a solution to global warming.

Source: New York Times

Nuclear Power as a Solution

As of right now, I am not sure there is a perfect answer to our energy crisis, but one small solution I think should get more attention is leaning more on nuclear energy during our transition.

Nuclear energy is a clean nonrenewable resource. After a few widely publicized meltdowns including, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island, the public is hesitant to support nuclear power, but the clean nature of its operation should be enough to encourage its support over coal and other fossil fuel alternatives. Nuclear power could be our clean bridge to renewable energy.

Let me know in the comments if you think renewables are ready for “prime time” or if you have any other solutions to our current energy crisis.

Thanks for reading!