Clean energy benefits: saving lives and yielding huge economic payback

Clean Energy benefits, as found by researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, United States! Led by professor of climate sciences Drew Shindell, they have managed to compute projections concluding that clean energy could play a vital role in the future for the preservation of life. It would do so by stopping or reducing global warming and generate cleaner air.

Their main assumption is that the US will honor their COP21 commitments by implementing clean energy and transportation policies, diminishing their GHG emissions by at least 67%, and keeping on going after the global goal of keeping temperatures below a 2°C increase. According to their conclusions, a total of 300,000 lives could be saved by 2030 in the US.

Clean energy benefits on environment

The benefits of clean energy on the environment are undeniable, especially in terms of reducing GHG emissions and climate change. Economically, it is well known that the return on clean energy investment will usually be in the long run, which is also a reason why the transition towards clean energy has taken so long to spark and spread.

On this aspect, it is worth mentioning that the Duke research forecasts a potential of US $250 billion annual yielding in the short run by 2030. It also asserts this amount would be five to ten times more important in the long run, especially in the occurrence of an international clean energy synergy.

Clean energy social benefits

The social aspect of clean energy is perhaps the trickiest when it comes to demonstrating how it is statistically and empirically impacted. For instance, global warming is sure expected to generate more extreme natural disasters, as well as desertification expanding from the tropics.

This would triggers massive demographic exodus towards the poles which should logically undergo slower impact. But the consequences of such significant migrations would be disastrous on all aspects of our world, per se social, environmental, and economical.

In order to extrapolate exclusively the impact of cleaner air on the social aspect, the scientists from Duke have projected their data in terms of life preservation and broad spectrum health issues, such as premature deaths and asthma. They managed to conclude that by 2030 in the US, clean energy policies could reduce premature deaths by 175,000 and clean transport policies by 120,000.

After 2030, the annual diminution of premature deaths would be of 22,000 for clean energy and 14,000 for clean transportation. Moreover, the respect by the US of their COP21 commitments could induce 29,000 fewer emergency-level asthma attacks for young minor Americans, and preclude the loss of up to 15 million working days for the economically active population.

Fortunately, the transition towards clean energy is now well started, and major actors from both the private and public sectors get more and more involved in the clean path. Environmental benefits are obvious, economical benefits are verified, and social benefits are extrapolated. Biogas is already proven to be economically viable, socially engaging and proactive, and environmentally clean, renewable and carbon-neutral.

Hence, it all makes sense to raise popular awareness about the potential of this source of renewable energy and to promote it worldwide among decision makers, in developed countries as well as in developing countries, to make it become a part of the solution to global warming by clean energy.

By Simon Lefebvre | 2016-03-15

Sources: Environmental Expert, US Environmental Protection Agency (image)