As concern about climate change, there is a constant debate about if governments should prioritize or not, renewable energy. Even though that I’m not an expert on this subject, I strongly believe that renewable energy are the most important industry to contain our levels of gas emissions. However, the transition needs to be moderate to prevent not having negative effects and consequences, as not reliable energy system or higher energy prices.
The most important reason why governments should prioritize renewable energy is the need to reduce of our gas emissions. In that ways, governments can fight the climate change, try to save the world and achieve the commitments that the Paris Agreement stablish for the countries who agree to participate. However, is important to prioritize in a moderate way to not impact negatively the energy prices. Event that the new technologies as solar energy generation, are reliable, there is an important need of complements as storage systems and electricity grids. Therefore, public investment in strategic infrastructure is essential to achieve a strong source of energy and to have a reliable system. Considering that, if governments do not prepare correctly to sustain the system without any traditional energy sources, as fuel or coal, can harm all the businesses that depends on them and decrease the economy growth.
Notwithstanding, to depend only in renewable energies is not a good idea and that is why so important to diversify in different energy sources. We can find some examples of public policies in Chile, when the President Sebastian Piñera decide to stablish a goal of not having more coal energy generation. At that moment, all the energy prices increase and many industries were affected by this policy. Even that Chile has an enormous potential of solar and wind generation, there are some industries that only develop their products and services using fuel as energy source. For those cases, governments should invest in innovation as synthetic fuel, also a renewable energy with less gas emissions that fuel but maintaining the way that fuel – in this case synthetic fuel – can be use.
In conclusion, I believe that governments should prioritize renewable energy but considering as a transition with moderate criteria and not extreme rules to not expose the market to higher prices or unreliable energy system. So the first investments should be apply to strategic and critic infrastructure and, secondly, in innovation to develop synthetic fuel. In my perspective, that the only way to approach this goal and become a country with less gas emissions but protecting the diversification of energy sources.