If you measured the fossil fuel usage of most countries, you’d be surprised at just how dependent they are with this source of power. Hence, environmentalists and researchers have searched for sources of renewable energy that could serve as an alternative.
A revolution is on the way, and it’s time to look for ways to save the environment. Renewable energy sources could be the perfect answer for this. Not only are these cheaper, these are also wildly abundant in many areas.
While renewable energy use is one the rise, there are some national governments that continue to maintain the coal and oil projects in their country. Still, there is a present demand from the world market and private entrepreneurship. This is driving what we now see as the latest revolution in the use of renewable energy.
These latest achievements weren’t always readily available. In fact, many might have assumed that this was near impossible. However, global climate change happened and the present energy used was considered a serious threat. Hence, men and women from related industries put their heads together and thought of the successive development of renewable energy. This was when nuclear fusion and electric cars were made, and what they discovered was that the subsequent developments were, in fact, cheaper and easier to scale.
Six months into the year 2021, we have already become witness to some of the most amazing progress in wind, solar, and EVs.
Tapping into African Sunshine
There are about half million people living in the Northern DR Congo cities of Gemena, Isiro, and Bumba. Right now, they are in for a great surprise. There is a triad of UK, French, and Spanish solar power companies that have considered looking into deals to supply the regions with reliable renewable energy, which is something that they need.
Citizens from the DRC are unfortunate recipients of the lowest rates of reliable electricity in the world. They have felt its negative impact and the solar power plants that are being built will help them with this problem. The construction is said to begin in just 18 months.
In West Africa, on the other hand, the Senegalese cities of Kael and Kahone will get around 60MW of solar power. This will be made available to them in the coming months with the help of different institutions that have offered the government some financing for sustainable energy. In reality, Senegal is a heavy net energy-importer. They have placed heavy financial burdens on their people just to make the imports such as brown coal and oil cheaper.
Then there’s Nigeria, which is one of Africa’s largest economies. The Solar Power Naija program is about to equip a total of 500,000 homes with solar panels. This will generate electricity for 25 million locals for next few years. In fact, the Jangefe community has already seen and experienced the start of the mammoth green electrification. A total of 1,000 homes in the area have already been equipped with rooftop solar panels.
The Windiest on Record
The year 2021 was the best year on record in terms of wind turbines. This institution finances its users with 93 new gigawatts added. This has shown a 53 percent increase since 2020, which is good for the manufacturers. The Wind Report given is a big and pleasant surprise. In fact, as quoted in the executive summary, “Through technology innovations and economies of scale, the global wind power market has nearly quadrupled in size over the past decade and established itself as one of the most cost-competitive and resilient power sources across the world.”
It has also been stated, “Today, there is now 743 GW of wind power capacity worldwide, helping to avoid over 1.1 billion tons of CO2 globally—equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of South America.”
The Aluminum Chancellor
Data had been assembled last March from Germany’s largest automotive industry review. The report produced a surprising statistic for those who have considered inesting in full long-term airport parking lot. They can now boast about the fact that 1 in 5 cars made in Germany can be plugged into these lots.
The Schmidt Automotive Research Center made the study and they found that 74,000 of the 373,900 cars that came out of the country’s assembly lines were either electric or hybrid vehicles. This came from the supply side. On the demand side, things are also quite impressive. Germany is the fourth largest auto market in the world, and electric car registrations (bought and driven EVs) have seen a growth from a 4 percent in the national market share in December 2019 to a gigantic leap of 26 percent market share in just a year’s time, and around 24 percent of these EVs came from Volkswagen.
Hybrids, on the other hand, has seen a leap from 3 percent to 13 percent. This means that there are more hybrids and EVs on German roads now as compared to the traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. This may just be a glimpse of the global surge in EV purchasing. It went up by around 40 percent during 2020, when most markets were suffering from COVID-related issues.
The New Green Pension
The South Korean monetary authorities are the holders of the largest state-controlled pension fund in the world. They have said in May that the $771 billion National Pension Fund will stop all investments that are related to coal power. This applies to usage from both home and abroad. They also made an announcement that they would change and adjust the guidelines for investment strategies to ensure that a more sustainable pattern will emerge for future use.
Adios, Coal: Spain Achieves the 50 Percent Renewable Milestone
Last middle of May, the Spanish legislature made an announcement. They said that they would be phasing out all oil, coal, and gas production by the year 2042. In fact, they even went so far as to saying that they would be banning all carbon-emitting vehicle sales by 2040.
The immediate future, the Spanish lawmakers want 74 percent of the national energy consumption to be entirely renewable by decade’s end. While this may seem like too much of a far-fetched idea, they are quite close to that goal. As of May of this year, the country witnessed 50 percent of their energy demand replaced by green energy. Romania also jumped on the bandwagon as well. They alerted the EU that through its National Recovery and Resilience Plan, they would end all coal production by 2032. By this time, they also hope to finish installing 34 percent renewable electricity to be at the helm.
Moreover, G7 is the world’s seven largest developed economies. They have all agreed to stop coal financing by the end of the 2021. This leaves the big African emitters, India, and China as the last one of the holdouts now because Japan, part of G7, has joined in this latest call as well.
Green Oil
In reality, it’s not business-as-usual in the boardrooms for all, especially in some of the world’s largest petroleum producers. In a memorable court decision, a judge in the Netherlands made an order and demanded that Royal Dutch Shell cut its emissions by 45 percent. This came after 17,000 people filed a lawsuit that proclaimed Shell’s large footprint on the greenhouse gas situation. Thus, the figures given merited a significant investment in CO2-slashing as part of its debt to society.
In other European countries, the Italian oil company Eni became the first to launch a corporate bond that is connected to energy sustainability. The said €1 billion 7-year bond is closely associated to two key performance indicator, as reported in Dow Jones, “Increasing renewable installed capacity to 5GW by the end of 2025; and halving the net carbon footprint of its upstream business to 7.4 million tons of CO2-equivalent by the end of 2024 from 2018 levels.”
Then, there is Engine No.1 , a shareholder group of ExxonMobil. They have managed to get two of their candidates elected to the American company’s board. This was on the argument that the their long-term strategy didn’t consider all of the value loss potential from climate change. The values come from both the shareholders jumping ship and the potential damages incurred from extreme weather incidents. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a total $8.6 trillion in private capital, and whose sustainable investment strategies GNN has reported looked into, assured the people that the Engine No.1 candidates got their positions by making use of their vote as part of being large shareholders.
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