Environmental Issues

The most receptive countries
The developed countries have shown the most serious attempts to develop capacity to use alternative energy as a source of energy as opposed to fossil fuels. This attempts may however be clouded by the fact that their fossil fuel usage is so large that it may take much more serious reductions before any progress is noticed. Germany leads the way in solar energy consumption and comes second to the United States in wind energy consumption. On the other hand, China with its enormous energy consumption, only manages a seventh rank in wind energy consumption. As much as the developing countries are making attempts to use clean energy, their efforts fall below those of the developed countries. The developing countries can easily argue that they are still trying to lift their populations out of poverty and therefore, if there are countries that should sacrifice for the sake of the environment then it should be the developed countries. On the contrary, developed countries have the capacity to research and develop the alternative sources of fuel.

Drawbacks of solar power
The main drawback to solar power is rigidity. The power has to be accessed at the right location at the right time, failure to which it fails being of benefit. Solar energy is only available when the sun shines and yet most of the power in homesteads is needed most at night, a time when the sun has gone down. That means that to plug the energy demand, one needs an alternative source of power at the time, which may not necessarily be green energy. In addition, the initial costs of installation of solar energy are still high, although these can be easily offset by the low costs of running and maintaining them. Despite these few setbacks, solar energy presents a very viable source of alternative energy if efforts can be made to reduce them. The first step in reducing the setbacks would be further research in to development of storage cells that have more capacity. This would enable the users the opportunity to store more power during the peak hours of production for later use. Another mitigation step would be in governments stepping in and making acquisition of solar equipment more affordable by issuing tax incentives to those interested in using them.