Renewable Energy Toppling Nuclear Energy in the United States

Lowering energy prices and growing investments are beginning to have a profound effect on the energy market. A report produced by Bloomberg says that the renewable energy markets’ has seen a huge bump in investments, up to 211 billion dollars; that’s a three percent increase over the same time last year. China is leading the charge that is transitioning the world into a more renewable-energy dependent place.

At the current rate, within a couple of years renewable energy will have surpassed fossil fuels in the amount of investments. Because of initiatives like these that increase the value of renewable energy, the United States is now making more renewable energy than it does nuclear power.

Any way that you examine the situation paints a clear picture that renewable energy is becoming extremely important. Last year, not counting hydropower, renewable energy made up 35 percent of the total power capacity added globally in 2010. Investments in this area hit around 187 billion dollars and things continue to increase as the renewable energy sector eases towards the fossil fuels market. Spending in renewable energy could outpace fossil fuels by as early as this year.

Cheaper Renewable Energy

A big part of the growing market is due in part to the decreasing price of renewable energy technology. Wind turbines, for example, are very mature technology at this stage but their price continues to decrease; they fell 18 percent over the last two years, while photovoltaics have gone down a whopping 60 percent in that same amount of time. “Further improvements in the levelised cost of energy for solar, wind and other technologies lie ahead, posing a bigger and bigger threat to the dominance of fossil-fuel generation sources in the next few years,” say the authors of the report.

That, of course, will be a big momentum shift but it’s worth noting that a similar occurrence has already happened this year: more money went to utility-scale projects in emerging markets than industrialized nations. This effort is being led by China, where the renewable energy investments increased by 30 percent and reached 49 billion dollars.

Percentage Increases

The United States saw an increase of about 60 percent but still ended up behind with only $25 billion in investments. That kind of market share should put the United States in second place, which is until small-scale solar technologies become more standard. Much of Germany has already equipped small-scale solar as standard technology and is pushing the country to second place worldwide. Other European countries are experiencing similar success in these areas; Italy, France and the Czech Republic are such examples. Initiatives like these are pushing solar energy closer to wind power in total investments.

Renewable energies are also growing increasingly outside of developing nations. Latin American investments saw a 300% increase to $6 billion, while other Asian nations realized a 30% growth up to 4 billion dollars. Thus far, Africa is the most prominent country, with 500% increases reaching 3.6 billion dollars. The report says, "Solar telecommunications towers are becoming the technology of choice, not a poor substitute for diesel or other fossil-fuel power options."

ars technica Photo by : CERTs