Whenever it comes to generating renewable energy governments find more prospects in bigger renewable energy such as wind and ethanol plants. A new study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has found that smaller and locally owned production units have more economic benefits than their bigger counterparts.
These researchers claim that large facilities have to spend more on shipping vast quantities of biofuel and transporting electricity to far off locations. Large productions usually gain by producing more and selling more, however the cost incurred in shipping electricity is much more than shipping cola cans. This means that smaller and locally owned facilities can do much better than large facilities located hundreds of miles from the places where energy is actually required the most.
Researchers also note that large facilities are more likely to be wasteful and incur a host of other diseconomies of scale than their smaller brother. Renewable energy can bring many benefits to the society and smaller but locally owned production facilities can just be the perfect icing on the cake.
Via: ILSR
