The topics of energy conservation, green initiatives, global warming, renewable energy, and environmental responsibility are popular today, but not much has changed in terms of governmental policy in the energy sector in a long time. Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of GE, explained during a recent MIT School of Engineering lecture that he took a course in 1981 called Energy Policy and the curriculum is exactly the same today in 2007.
This passivity, Immelt explains, is a direct result of a lag between “market signals and time horizons, as well as societal expectation that energy is a God-given right.” It is a fact that the dynamics of the energy market is changing as the cost of energy continues to spiral upward, and the primary sources of hydrocarbons become less secure. The National Academies and other reputable scientific organizations also provide strong evidence on the risk of adverse climate change from global warming caused in part by growing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions.
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