These days the globe is facing some crucial problems which also translate in restrictions for sustainable development, thus for the quality of human life. Among the critical development barriers there are high energy costs that represent a significant factor of the production chain. Therefore, if policy makers and researchers don’t find appropriate solutions to replace these with other methods and technologies, the global wheels of the world can be absolutely and dangerously affected.
High energy costs could contribute to the decrease of production as they are one of the most important inputs for producing materials and products. This can be seen as one of the world’s most critical changes in 21st century, because with less production, we can expect higher inflation. Moreover, high energy costs also provoke food shortage as a consequence of reduced production, thereby causing dramatic rises in prices.
Consequently, with increasing prices, people ability to buy is weakened, resulting in a reduction of demand that, in turn, reduces the speed of production turnover. Ultimately, this sequence of effects can contribute to extend inflation, which is another key problem of the world in 21st century.
Given the above circumstances and critical challenges, further deteriorating economic conditions in the globe can be expected. As such, the current economic downturn becomes the key issue requiring more consideration for today politicians. Priority in this context, should be given to high energy costs, a really crucial element for the world worsening economic crisis.
Indeed, some solutions could be found to address the problem of high energy costs, such as finding other clean and less costly energies while reducing the overall energy consumption. First contributors of all are the governments and policy makers. They must increase budget of research and developments (R&D) centres to discover and develop less expensive and renewable energies to replace current energies, which are not only polluting but also expensive. In this connexion, more research and development in wind and solar energies, among other renewable, can be certainly a sound solution to solve the problems at stake.
Moreover, I believe reducing energy consumption, particularly fossil fuels, with a combination of cultural and technical approaches supporting an increased social responsibility by all global stakeholders, is a resourceful and beneficial method both for human beings and the environment to simultaneously address the 21st century problems as illustrated above. Furthermore, some high quality TV programs could ideally illustrate and explain these concerns while improving people awareness towards reducing energy consumption extracted from fossil fuels. This approach can be used in manufacturing processes as well, in order to introduce better and more efficient solutions, less energy consuming, combining new technologies and methods using both renewable and less fossil fuel energy. These solutions will absolutely influence the level of energy use and its quality.
In conclusion, the globe is experiencing significant changes with high energy costs in 21st century. These changes result in decreasing of world production, increasing in material prices and food shortage, which all lead the world to inflation, food crisis and economic downturn.