Governments subsidies

A commercial-scale SNG plant, the Great Plains Plant in North Dakota, was actually built and operated for several years using a scheme based on coal. However, upon termination of the government subsidy, the plant s owner, ANR Inc., found it uneconomical to continue plant operation and shut down the plant in the late 1980s. 

While several other processes have been developed to convert natural gas to liquid fuels (GTL), these technologies are generally uneconomical composed to using the crude oil feedstocks. About one-third of the energy in natural gas is lost in converting it into liquid fuels, so highly distressed gas prices or government subsidies are needed for GTL to be competitive. 

In Denmark, the organic food market was initiated by government subsidies and advisory services to organic farmers. Until 1993, the consumption of organic food was at a steady 1 % to 2% of the total food market share (Wier Calverley, 2002). However, consumption... 

Further, the authors have carefully examined and documented the public health and environmental impacts of pesticide use in the USSR. The USSR was the largest country by territory in the world and the use of pesticide here was enormous. As the authors have shown, this happened mostly because the USSR s Communistic rulers decided at the end of the 1960 s — to turn all chemical weaponry plants (constructed in the beginning of the cold war) to pesticide production. With rich government subsidies, pesticides were distributed through all collective farms The Soviet official policy, the chemicalisation of agriculture, was an attempt to overcome its prominent ineffectiveness in crop production. 

Synthetic fuels may attract local government subsidies or sell at a premium because they offset imports and improve the country s balance of payments. Furthermore, strategic considerations related to energy security may play an important role in promoting investment in synthetic fuels production. 

Because of the immense initial investment, FTS has only been commercialized when some form of government support was available. In each instance, the developer generated a profitable technology and more than repaid the government subsidy. 

A few chapters of this book are devoted to the use of glycerol and alternatives to transesterification. These two processes compete with the food chain. Whereas in the short term these are viable, be it mainly through government subsidies, on the longer term these processes will have to be replaced by more amply available and non-food competing processes. 

In any uranium separation process the work of enrichment increases rapidly with 235U content in the product. Because the price of natural uranium varies widely with time and location (and fluctuating government subsidies) it is useful to distinguish between the price of the feed and the value added by the separative process. For example, the purchaser himself might provide the feed and then pay only for the separative work required to make the desired product. Separative work is defined in Equation 8.7. 

By contrast, in countries with a small market size, domestic demand is likely to be insufficient to justify large private outlays for R D. Pharmaceutical companies and equity flows available to such companies appear to be attracted to countries in which there is a sizable domestic market or, at least, public policies are favorable to the sale of pharmaceutical products. Thus, smaller countries, which inevitably have smaller domestic markets, tend not to be as well positioned to attract pharmaceutical companies and investment. In addition, such countries are more vulnerable to shortages in the event of national emergencies, such as pandemics. For this reason, some form of government intervention may be required, including government subsidy, public investment in pharmaceutical research, and even direct public production. 

Wind power is not without its detractors. There are those who find the turbines to be noisy and unsightly, and others who have concerns about the blades endangering birds and bats. The fact that continued government subsidies and incentives have been required point out the inefficiencies of the technology. However, wind power saves millions of tons of carbon dioxide (C02) emissions each year. 

The Spanish Photovoltaic Industry Association, known as Asociacion de la Industria Fotovoltaica (ASIF) represents manufacturers and users of photovoltaic energy in Spain. The nation of Spain has an extremely active solar energy industry which is encouraged by government subsidies. 

---