IMAGE CREDIT: REMI NETWORK
January 28, 2013, London, UK – Burning fossil fuels for energy is a disastrous waste of natural resources preventing their use for the manufacture of fertilizer, medicines, clothing and other vital goods, according to a German think tank.
A study by the World Future Council, based in Hamburg, has attempted for the first time to put an economic price on the consumption of oil, gas and hard coal to produce energy when they could be used instead for making useful things.
A report – The Monetary Cost of the Non-Use of Renewable Energies – by Dr. Matthias Kroll, released today to the Climate News Network , claims the cost of these important natural resources runs into trillions of dollars a year, but does not appear in economic calculations of the costs of generating energy.
It should, he argues, be factored into cost comparisons between renewables and fossil fuels, otherwise people will have a false impression of their relative appeal.
He argues that, because the use of renewable energy to replace fossil fuels saves natural resources for future generations, this gain should be added to the reckoning in assessing the benefits of switching to wind energy and solar technologies.
Dr Kroll says it is often claimed that renewables are still too costly and not yet competitive with conventional energy. Yet the cost of depriving, say, the petro-chemical industry of an irreplaceable resource for making plastics when fossil fuels are burnt is not considered.
Click here to read the report.
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