Midterm Summary

Midterm Summary Overview

Welcome to the midpoint of our journey together through the renewable energy nonmarket landscape!

As you will recall, the concepts about markets we have covered view market behaviors from a sociological perspective in how markets are formed, the different types of markets that can exist, the roles and behaviors of buyers and sellers within markets, as well as how markets can be created, controlled, and transformed. We take a sociological approach to markets here because it is necessary for understanding how and why nonmarket strategies can work in shifting market behaviors and open up new markets in ways economic theories about markets cannot readily explain or anticipate.

As we discovered, the existence of status markets alone demonstrates that something other than valuing costs per unit volume can be central to decision-making processes of various market agents. Factors other than cost or even status can come into play in creating and shifting market behaviors. Ethical issues, such as equity, support of human rights, and environmental justice, can also dictate market behaviors and willingness-to-pay for certain conditions to be possible... even if the socially responsible alternatives cost more at the moment. Take, for example, how the issue of sourcing diamonds from regions that exploit child labor became a much more significant consideration in the diamond market than just quality and price. Similar issues concerning child labor and abhorrent environmental conditions can exist in the extraction of certain rare-earth elements; some of these elements are essential to many renewable energy applications (from magnets to PV).

The fact is, as manufacturers like Apple have discovered, unethical conditions can arise most anywhere along a global supply chain, without warning. While correcting course to rectify the unethical conditions is the socially responsible thing for a company to do, there also still exits an underlying market rationale here. Namely, that globally normative expectations about corporate behavior will eventually become the market norm, and getting ahead of those market expectations could prove rewarding, while failing to meet normative expectations can result in significant market impacts (e.g., BP oil rig disaster of 2009).

As we make our way through the second half of this course, we will continue to focus on the social, political, and ethical nonmarket conditions that support the rationale for various renewable energies. Further, you will learn how these nonmarket conditions can be strategized for and then implement them, as a written policy, for your renewable energy enterprise.

Learning Objectives for the Midterm

• Apply the concepts describing market behavior, formation, and function.
• Identify the key differences between various approaches to costing energy projects.
• Categorize the various externalities, hidden costs, and uncertainties of renewable energy projects.
• Describe the reasons for the various parts of a life-cycle assessment/analysis.
• Provide reasons and imperatives for assessing environmental impacts of energy projects, from local to global scales.
• Demonstrate understanding of sustainability theory as it relates to energy market and energy project analysis.

What is due for the Midterm Exam?

The Midterm Exam, located in Canvas in the Lessons folder for this course, will be open for 10 days, during which time the exam needs to be completed. Once you begin the exam, you will have 24 hours to complete the exam. The exam will close @ 11:55pm the last evening of the 10-day duration, regardless if you began the exam less than 24 hours prior to the exam's scheduled closing time.