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An economic and policy simulation analysis of a transition to renewable energy technologies
Abstract
Perpetuation of economic growth and social well-being will continue to require energy to power our economic and technological infrastructures. Continuing to meet these energy demands as we do today is constrained by the existence of a finite resource stock and the ability of the local and global environments to assimilate the emissions of the current energy sources. A transition to renewable energy sources provides a means to sustain economic and social well-being by eliminating the resource and environmental constraints of conventional energy sources. The term sustainability has been broadly adopted to evoke the idea of providing future generations with a society which is at least no worse off than our own. Literature in this field is reviewed and includes contributions from a broad spectrum of disciplines with economic, technical, ethical, and philosophical affirmations. Energy policy in the United States was recently addressed in the National Energy Strategy under the Bush Administration. The policy fails short of confronting resource or environmental sustainability issues and is focused on short term solutions without preparing for long term needs. Alternative models and policy proposals have surfaced as a reaction to the government study. An economic and policy model is developed in this dissertation which addresses specific characteristics of a long term national energy transition to renewable energy sources. The Energy and Environmental Economic Transition (E$\sp3$T) model is built on traditional economic analyses to integrate the conventional and renewable energy supply and demand sectors. The renewable energy sector is characterized by technical parameters and endogenous treatment of technological change and market penetration. Policy variables are employed to evaluate resource stock, tax, subsidy, pollution abatement, market structure, and other policies. The E$\sp3$T model is a simulation tool which produces paths of conventional and renewable energy supply and price levels over a sufficient time frame. Other evaluation output variables are developed to address issues of economic cost and sustainability. Although the input database and model details are insufficient to apply the simulation results directly to policy formulation, results are presented to illustrate the model's capabilities and distinctions relative to other energy policy models.
Subject Area
Economics|Environmental science|Engineering
Recommended Citation
Breger, Dwayne Steven, "An economic and policy simulation analysis of a transition to renewable energy technologies" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9420602.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9420602