BY FRANK DALENE
In several recent articles, I have written about the financial benefits of adopting renewable energy. I’ve written about how generating your own renewable energy can drastically reduce your energy bills. I’ve also written about how investing in green technologies like anaerobic digesters, which convert biomaterial into biogas, can actually make you money. Even if your business model is not built on making money by going green, going green can still offer substantial financial benefits.
So, let’s turn our attention to the energy source often placed in opposition to renewable energy: fossil fuels. Is there a financial benefit to adopting fossil fuels?
The answer is simple: no. In fact, there is a social cost, as Stanford University economists Marshall Burke and Lawrence Goulder explained in a 2021 interview. Burke defines the social cost of carbon as “the total damage that an additional ton of CO2 has on outcomes, converted into dollars.” This cost impacts agriculture, human health, and labor productivity, all of which affect economic output. As Burke explains,
“In many tropical countries, impacts on agriculture are likely the most important. In industrialized countries such as the U.S., where agriculture is a small share of the overall economic output, impacts on health and labor productivity are the most important effects. For example, many studies now show very clearly that our productivity at work declines quickly as the temperature gets hot. If that happens to every single person in an economy, even if the temperature has gone up only a little bit, economy-wide effects can be quite large. There’s also very good research showing that hotter temperatures lead to worse health outcomes. Hot temperatures directly affect cardiovascular function and that is linked with heat stroke and heat-related deaths. Homicides, suicides and traffic accidents also all go up in response to high temperatures.”[1]
Indeed, there are many health costs related to pollution and particulates from burning fossil fuels, which cause diseases such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is caused by damage to the lungs.
The bottom line is, it is We, the People, who suffer from the use of fossil fuels. And it’s We, the People, who benefit from using renewable energy. So, shouldn’t We, the People—the ones who will eventually suffer or benefit—get to choose what kind of energy we want to be used, rather than the government? The People drive the free market economy. They decide what they want to buy. They choose the winners and losers. Give The People the ability to choose their own future. All The People need in order to do this is the correct information to make an educated choice—which is exactly what ICEMAN offers: a mechanism, based in science and math, by which We, the People, can understand and evaluate a product or service’s carbon footprint at a glance.
But it doesn’t end there: with ICEMAN, not only individual consumers, but businesses and the whole economy will reap the benefits of renewable energy. With ICEMAN, there won’t be any mandate on what companies do with the money they save from investing in renewable energy. Companies can put those savings toward their bottom line, making them more profitable; they can in turn pass that profit on to their shareholders. They can use those savings to lower the cost of their products for consumers, giving themselves an even greater competitive advantage in the marketplace.
In this way, ICEMAN fits perfectly into a free market economy by incentivizing the use of renewable energy, creating a financial benefit for the company and thereby reducing the cost of products for consumers.
But the benefits of ICEMAN go beyond individual businesses, extending to the economy as a whole, on a state, national, and even global level. Investing in clean energy infrastructure directly creates jobs. Building solar panels, installing and maintaining wind farms and solar farms—these are all job creators.
And it doesn’t stop there. When a community—be it a town, a region, or an entire state—invests in renewable infrastructure, ICEMAN will guarantee that infrastructure will be a draw for manufacturers and companies to come to that area. When manufacturers and companies move into an area, they bring jobs with them—not just in the jobs they directly provide, but in the businesses that will grow and thrive to support the people and families moving to the area to work those jobs.
Jobs and economic development follow industry, and industry follows the technology it requires to be successful. When railroads were built across America, towns developed around railroad stops. At the time, the railroad was the height of technology; and wherever the railroad went, industry followed. Industry needed the technology of transportation; it needed arteries with which to move products, so it went where the railroad was.
Today, transportation is no longer the peak of technology. Today, with ICEMAN, the peak of technology that will draw industry will be renewable energy infrastructure. Just as transportation played a critical role in developing industry in the past, renewable energy will drive industry in the present and future.
But all of this can only happen if the We, the People, are given the power to choose our present and our future. This is America, the land of the free and home the brave. True Americans need to be free enough and brave enough to make their own choice of what energy source to invest in. Americans have the power to move markets; the government should not usurp that power from The People.
Frank Dalene, an Amazon Best Selling Author in Green Business & Environmental Economics titled, Decarbonize The World: Solving The Climate Crisis While Increasing Profits In Your Business, and Founder of the Hamptons Green Alliance, a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. Learn more at frankdalene.com and hamptonsgreenalliance.org.
[1] Isabella Backman, “Professors Explain the Social Cost of Carbon,” Standford Report, June 7, 2021, https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2021/06/professors-explain-social-cost-carbon.