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high school topic thoughts?

I know we're all knee-deep in thoughts Southeast Asian, but some of us
have to give topic lectures at workshops in a couple of weeks, and I'm
hoping to kick start a thread in that direction.  With this in mind, I've
come up with the following matrix, which I'm hoping ya'll can help me
elaborate upon.  The way I see it, there are essentially three actions
available to promote renewables - positive incentives (tax credits,
subsidies), regulatory mechanisms (PURPA, Renewables Portfolio Standard,
Carbon tax, tradeable permits), and R&D efforts (about 1000 different
DOE/business efforts to develop/market RE tech).   Each of these
mechanisms, moreover, may target one of three general sectors of the
economy - consumers (individuals and businesses operating as energy
consumers), producers (businesses and industries involved in the
production of energy-consuming products or the generation of energy) and
government (acting as both consumer and producer, including State and
Federal branches, as well as the military).  Each of these sectors
consumes/produces energy in one of two primary sectors: transporation or
electricity generation.  This matrix (actions/mechanisms along the
horizontal axis, targetted sector along the vertical axis) is fairly
inclusive, but there are several things which don't seem to fit.  I'm
hoping you have the answers to some of these questions:

What about agriculture?  Is it an energy consumer sector distinct from
transportation & electricity generation, or a subset?  What about
pesticides from fossil fuels - is there a renewable alternative, and, if
so, where would it go on the matrix?

What other positive incentives are there besides tax credits and
subsidies?  Most of the topical mechanisms seem to be regulatory in
nature, but I'm sure I'm overlooking something.
 
Is nuclear power a RE source?  Fission, or just fusion?  I'm looking for
arguments, not definitions.  Any thoughts are appreciated.  

Anyway, at least it's a break from the SEA discussion.  

Dave
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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