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Green energy technologies have been debated extensively over the past decade, generally being discussed within the framework of comparison to fossil fuels with regards to price and environmental impact. The two sides of the debate hang nearly their entire argument on one specific aspect of their source of choice, that green energy has less impact on the environment and that fossil fuels are cheaper to produce. The promotion of technological advances in green energy are met with criticism as far as costing too much to continue pursuing, and the alternative energy side argues that fossil fuel power is destroying the environment. This argument has gone on for nearly a decade without resolution as far as a large-scale global commitment to development of green energy technologies, essentially because of the higher costs.
There is no viable argument that green energy has a greater impact on the environment than fossil fuels. Because of this fact, the fossil fuel advocates instead argue that the impact that is put forth in reports is exaggerated, and is not enough of a crisis to justify the higher cost of production. By arguing that global warming and climate change is not a reality, the fossil fuel industry removes itself from responsibility for changes to the atmosphere. While this may or may not be the case, there is nobody on earth who denies that there is no pollution whatsoever that is created by burning fossil fuels. Instead, the argument is that it is a small enough amount of pollution to not justify paying more for power production of other sources. All attempted arguments that green energy technologies impact the environment in the same way are ludicrous, and are easily dismissed.
The entirety of the debate is actually hinged on production costs, because if the two sources cost the same amount to produce then there would be no reason to choose the one that has obvious impacts on the environment, no matter how small. This is where technological advances in both the alternative energy fields as well as in other areas have doomed the fossil fuel industry, due to the fact that production costs associated with green energy will soon be lower than fossil fuels.
One significant advancement that has attributed to this reduction in production costs is the evolution of better forms of industrial surge protection for wind turbines and solar panels. Due to the fact that a large percentage of the costs of production comes in the form of equipment repair and replacement, any reduction in the amount of damage sustained by the equipment drives costs of production down. The leading cause of damage to components of green energy is lightning strikes and the associated power surge that travels through connected lines and damages computer circuitry. Additionally, traditional surge protection devices might be able to stop the surge from hitting the connected equipment, but this process takes the system offline until it can be reset. These issues contributed to the higher costs of energy production using these forms. The cost is not in the fuel, but instead is in the management equipment. There have been significant improvements to the industrial surge protection devices that are utilized in these industries as of late, including one line which needs no resetting or replacement whatsoever. This allows not only for the increased life spans of equipment involved in the production process, but allows the systems to stay online for maximum amounts of time, creating energy for as long as the sun shines and wind blows. This ability to create surplus energy will further drive costs down, creating a situation where alternative energy is cheaper to produce that traditional energy. At that point, the debate is over.
