Redchenkov A. A., Lakey I. M., Lobanova V. V.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

MODERN PROSPECTS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

Recently World Energy faced a serious problem: energy consumption is growing steadily, and the supplies of fossil fuels, which is the basis of the traditional power are limited. For example, the supplies of oil will be over in 50–70 years, gas in 50–60 years, and coal in 600 years.

One of the problems in modern economy is search for new resources. The problem is not only in the fact that natural resources are limited, but also the fact that the available fields are being rapidly depleted, and therefore there is a need to equip the new, resulting in a huge spendings. Moreover, people in the world have come to the conclusion that the use of fossil fuels causes damage to nature.

Also the issue of insecurity of traditional sources of energy is very important. Everybody is aware of the Chernobyl disaster, the accident at the plant Fukusima in March of 2011, and accident on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in May 2010. Therefore, many countries have begun protests against nuclear power plants, and in Germany and Switzerland nuclear power plants should be completely stopped no later than 2022.

Many scientists see the way out of this situation in development of alternative energy and promoting renewable energy sources (RES).

Today, the international community pays much attention to the development of renewable energy, making it an important area of public policy. Well-funded state programs to develop alternative energy began to appear all over the world. Regulatory and legislative acts which increase the use of renewable energy have been accepted.

According to European Directive, released in 2009, in 2020 EU countries are going to increase renewable energy in the total share up to 20%.

In Denmark, there are grants and concessional loans for manufacturers of wind turbines. Similar programs exist in other EU countries. For example, in Germany grants will exceed 13bn euros this year, as the state is obliged to buy out the wind energy for more market price and sell cheaper for market users.

The main advantage over other traditional energy sources – are their renewability, safety, prevalence and availability. Other advantages for alternative energy sources are security of supply and rising prices for traditional fuels.

Unfortunately, non-conventional energy sources have their weaknesses, the main one – is the high cost of the received energy.

Subsidies for alternative energy are unprofitable for Russian government, because half of produced oil and gas is sold on the domestic market and provides one-sixth of the federal budget. President Vladimir Putin stated at an international summit on the environment in 2012, "Solar, wood or dried manure can’t replace hydrocarbons in the next 15–20 years".

Ecological security is closely linked with the political security. We depend on the energy resources of the Russian Federation, which has a monopoly in the supply of gas to Ukraine. It leads to economical and political instability and makes Ukraine vulnerable in the international arena. That’s why there is an urgent need to implement energy saving technologies. And Ukraine is making progress in this sector. Here are some examples:

· investment in energy savings is $2.5bn in 2012 in Ukraine;

· according to the Pew Cheritable Trusts’ research Ukraine ranked 25th out of 116 countries on the development of energy-saving technologies.

But these figures are far from the European indicators. For example, in Germany 22 GW of energy are annually produced on “green power stations”, which is comparable to the work of 20 nuclear power plants.

In conclusion ,we can see that renewable energy is a very progressive thing and it is our future. It is making a visible progress presently and is worth our attention because it can save our world which is searching for cheaper and safer energy resources.