Alternative Fuels & Policies

During the recent years, fuel has become a large topic of discussion. The word ‘oil’ has a loaded meaning, it is seen, besides an important product that drives large parts of the global economy, as a harmful good, to the economy and even claimed reasons for wars. Historically, oil has become so important it is seen as a weapon of mass destruction, as several countries are so powerful in providing oil, that when they instruct an embargo, many countries go into soaring recessions, as was seen in the first oil crisis in 1973 (Frum, 2000). Another problem that oil has is it’s non-renewable property. Research shows that oil is expected to last another 35 to 40 years (Shafiee & Topal, 2009). The risks of not having a complete transition to an alternative fuel before then are unthinkable. The final problem that arose in the recent decades is the environmental damage caused by the burning of oil (Oil Change International, 2014). The climate changes that have occurred since have to be contained, since it causes heavy storms, changing of the seasons, which in turn causes disruptions in the production of food, and many other risks, where many are still unknown. The current largest new alternative types of fuels are electricity, hydrogen and biofuels. These fuels all have their pros and cons as well as the pros and cons of the relevant infrastructure, making it hard to predict which one will be ‘the new oil’. The Dutch government has introduced many fiscal advantages for those willing to buy and drive clean cars, increasing the sales of these ‘green’ cars (Rijksoverheid, 2014). However, due to government budget cuts some of these incentives have been diminished, causing the growth of the sales of clean cars to decrease immediately. Since new technologies in the clean fuel industry are expected to arise in the next few years, one can call the timing of the diminishing incentives unfortunate. The infrastructure of the new types of fuels is mostly regulated locally. This causes a divergence in the type of fuel that is promoted within the Netherlands, but also within the European Union. The Netherlands is one of the leading countries in electric driving, however, a small economy such as the Netherlands cannot have an impact on the new type of alternative fuel, and thus the investments made will be useless when the new alternative fuel turns out to be a different one than anticipated.