Demand for renewable energy skyrockets around the world
TechnologyWhen my husband and I moved from Wisconsin to South Florida, it was January. We were grateful to escape the snow, ice, and extremely cold temperatures. In South Florida, there was no need for heavy blankets, layers of clothing, or even the furnace that spewed out hot air.
But that easy sigh of relief changed as we entered our first summer months and it suddenly felt like we were living on the surface of the sun. The air conditioning was on full blast and you tried to avoid going outside for fear of melting on the sidewalk.
The high energy bill that I escaped during the winter months came back with a vengeance during the summer.
And my family isn’t the only one increasing our energy use.
While the balance of energy we’re using might have shifted slightly, where we now source that energy has changed dramatically over the years, and that’s creating an incredible opportunity for investors…
A new source of power
Our energy demands grow with each passing year. Every new gadget and gadget has a battery that needs to be charged. More computers, laptops, tablets, machinery, and robots to keep businesses running are consuming energy. And naturally, as we head into those scorching summer months, the air conditioning is on full blast.
But the world is moving away from traditional sources of energy, such as coal, natural gas, oil, and even nuclear power, to add more renewable energy.
In fact, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that for the first time since 1984, renewable energy provided more power than nuclear in March and April of this year. Nuclear generation has actually fallen to its lowest level since 2014, and net generation has been relatively flat since the late 1990s.
Few nuclear power plants are coming online, while a growing number of older plants are beginning to retire.
On the other hand, more than 60% of all large-scale electricity that came online in 2016 was wind or solar power.
Part of the growing appeal of renewable energy is the fact that the cost to build more types of renewable energy plants fell between 2013 and 2015, according to the EIA.
During that time period, only power plants using petroleum liquids experienced an increase in the cost of construction.
Increase in global demand
Demand for more renewable energy options has skyrocketed around the world. At the end of June, Germany revealed that it broke a green energy record by generating 35% of its power from renewables in the first half of 2017.
The country plans to phase out all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 and has set a goal of generating 80% of its gross energy consumption from renewable energy sources by 2050.
Meanwhile, China recently announced that it successfully ran an entire region on renewable energy alone for seven days. Qinghai province, population 5.2 million, was supplied solely with wind, solar and hydropower, using 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours. That amount of power would have required 535,000 tons of coal.
China has reported that it plans to invest $366 billion in renewable energy technology by 2020.
The renewable energy you’re not seeing
We are seeing more and more stories about renewable energy farms and plants meeting our energy needs despite falling oil and natural gas prices.
Solar power is on the rise. The first phase of a new 248-acre solar farm in China, shaped like a panda, was completed in late June. When all phases are completed, the Panda Power Plant will be able to produce 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours of solar energy, eliminating the need for millions of tons of coal that would otherwise have been used to produce power for Chinese citizens.
Wind turbines will soon power Google data centers in Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland, thanks to an exclusive 12-year agreement signed with a new 50-turbine wind farm in Norway.
But while wind and solar power often grab all the headlines, there is another source of renewable energy that is available almost everywhere in the world and could see a massive boom in demand.