The Role of Small Business in the Context of the Use of Non-Traditional Renewables Primary Energy Sources

Abstract

Due to the uneven location of fossil fuel deposits, many countries around the world are forced to import oil, natural gas, and coal to support economic growth and the development of electricity and heat supply, the chemical industry, and transport infrastructure. Global and intercountry trade in such vital energy resources as oil and natural gas largely depends on the economic behavior of major oil and natural gas producers, which, as practice has shown, when their own fields are depleted, from time to time hinders the economic growth of oil and gas-importing countries. The desire of technologically advanced importing countries to free themselves from energy imports has led to the fact that they have now managed to reduce the cost of power generation by solar and wind power plants, so that in some cases they have proven to be cost-effective and can replace some of the oil and/or gas imports. The main economic agents using solar and wind energy are large companies. However, N. E. Egorova and S. A. Nekrasov, based on the fact that both sunlight and wind are sources of primary energy, whose spatial density is lower than that of organic fuels, apparently for the first time in the world scientific literature, investigated the question: whether small and medium businesses could be involved to expand the range and scale of solar and wind energy for electricity generation. To answer this question, N. E. Egorova and S. A. Nekrasov used tectology, a theory proposed by A. A. Bogdanov in the early 1920s. With its help they got a positive answer. It was supported by taking into account the vertical location of sunlight receivers, which expanded the area of localization of solar power plants. This article is devoted to the same question. The analysis showed that the prospect of participation of small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) is niche in nature and attracting investors in this area of human activity is possible if the economic characteristics of localized solar and wind power plant projects are acceptable to investors.