Furthermore, subsidy reforms that increase the price of natural gas and oil feedstocks provided to electricity and water utilities will serve to make renewable energy more cost competitive relative to fossil-fuel based power and water production [27].
Greenpeace and the environmental group Kiko Network said in a joint report that Japan's determination to press ahead with a massive expansion in fossil fuel-based power production, with at least 43 plants to be built over the next 12 years, would come at a price to human health and "lock in carbon emissions for decades".
Therefore, our approach may be perceived as an attempt to present an alternative or an opposing concept to the country's nuclear-based power production.
As a result, average GHG emissions are today around two orders of magnitude lower for nuclear energy than for conventional coal-based power production.
This significant reduction is attributed to two reasons: (1) utilization of renewable biomass (coconut shell) instead of fossil fuel (coal) and (2) allocation of coconut residues for offsetting fossil fuel-based power production capacity.
As part of the United States Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy, the National Energy Technology Laboratory NETLL) implements research, development and demonstration (RD&D) that is focused on maximizing system efficiency and performance while minimizing the costs of coal-based power production with carbon capture and storage.
Even without climate legislation, coal-based power production is being held somewhat in check by low prices for natural gas, a cleaner fossil fuel that emits roughly half the CO2 as coal when it is burned.
This new system of renewable energy based power and distillate water production is highly self-sustainable in the remote areas.
Second, the more we transition off centralized, fossil-fuel based power grids and cumbersome production facilities that pose a security risk to potential domestic attack (e.g. nuclear and coal plants, gas pipelines or oil refineries), and transition to micro-managed wind and solar infrastructure, the less risk we will face in light of growing terror attacks.
Scale-up studies reveal that the production cost can decrease by half while the investment per unit of power should become competitive with current coal based power plants if solar and coal facilities present similar production capacities.
