I recently received a flyer from the local solar panel vendor for installing solar panels on the roof. This is great! But let us apply our mind differently as an economist!
Consider the below points:
Governments are on the lookout for opportunities supporting harnessing of non-conventional energy sources such as wind turbines, biofuels, ocean based alternate energy sources etc.
Many Governments do not have many options to create new hydro-electric power plants or build the unpopular nuclear power stations.
The need for energy is growing in leaps and bounds each passing day.
Most of the conventional sources have been depleted and over-exploited.
Transmission and distribution losses of stored and potential energy sources are not only high but perhaps adding to the climate change and global warming problems.
At the point of use, even for a cleaner burning fuels like gas, the burning efficiency is most likely to be expected to be less than 85%. Look at this problem from the point of view of volume of burner installations in a given country and immediately we know there is a serious problem at hand.
Why can’t the Governments look at the house-roofs as a potential source of non-conventional solar energy?
Instead of expecting the house owners to invest in solar panels, the government should look at economies of scale and try to install the solar panels from its own initiative.
The price of excess energy pumped into the energy grid through such installations, in due course can pay for the installation and maintenance costs eventually.
Besides another alternate line of industrial sector level opportunity arises at a nation-wide scale leading to lot of employment opportunities that will cover the below activities:
o Solar panel production
o Solar panel installation and maintenance
o Solar panel recycling
o Manufacturing, distribution, maintenance of SCADA systems and related components linked to solar power generation
o Increased use of SCADA systems to track climate change, sustainability and global warming metrics and the related employment generation stats.
The governments should understand the grand scale of this opportunity and hence should avoid blind-importing and instead create a strong industrial base and an supporting eco-system including education, training and recycling for supporting this new business opportunity capable of creating thousands of job opportunities.
Besides, the government should invest in designing new SCADA systems with appropriate end point measurement devices for the below domestic uses as we race towards the UNSDG 2030 goals and objectives.
The following domestic metrics should be tracked:
Electricity consumption data
Water consumption data
Gas consumption data
Gas flume analysis data
House heating efficiency data based on prior benchmarked test data for various types of homes and space heating systems.
Normal waste data
Recyclable waste data
E-Waste data
Bio-degradable waste data
Sewage data
Based on the above metrics tracked and measured using SCADA end point devices, the data should be fed into centralized city-level SCADA systems which can be further aggregated and analysed for cities, boroughs, counties, regions and at the nation scale too.
Based on the analysed and researched data, the following recommendations and more may be shared to the community at large for adoptions/implementations:
Report on where we stand on UNSDG 2030 goals and objectives
Maintenance alerts of home devices like boilers, gas burners, space heating elements etc., based on potentially achievable efficiencies and effectiveness.
Maintenance alerts (abnormal increase in consumption due to equipment faults or leakages) on home devices that needs to be maintained or replaced.
The above 2 points can generate its own employment opportunities for the production, recycling, installation and maintenance aspects of the said devices. So replacing inefficient/ineffective devices should no longer be a home makers problem as long as he is not opting for the aesthetic and state of art options! The government can take lead for these initiatives and should cover the cost of such operations using an ESG tax that can be attached to all the point of sales activities.
Again, to exhibit fairness, all the household device and appliances sold touching the above domestic metrics, can be categorized as below (as an example) based on price bands:
Basic
Essential
Comfort
Premium and
Luxury
Those appliances that are majorly causing worries on the sustainability, global warming and climate change should be targeted to net the ESG tax.
For basic and essential goods, rigorous R&D (since we are seeing large number of installations at this level) should focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness and/or to look at the adoption of greener initiatives, if possible, to bring down the ESG tax. For marginal elements of the society, ESG tax can be avoided. (In fact other taxes like VAT can be lower to for goods classified as 'Basic' and 'Essential'.
Based on the data gathered for each household, the carbon data can be calculated and for houses that have lesser than national average carbon emissions data, carbon credits can be given in the form of tax breaks and incentives.
References:
https://www.boiler-planning.com/en/efficiency/basics/combustion-efficiency.html
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