During this year’s presidential campaign, the renewable energy industry and the tax credits that support it receives have become a hot political topic.
Renewable energy enjoys broad support in the US where people expect the government to support emerging clean power technologies and the 2012 Global Consumer Wind Study would make useful reading for both candidates. Keep reading →
Energy supply will soon no longer be a commodity, exchangeable and undifferentiated. Transparency about methods of production combined with increased consumer enthusiasm for authentic ways of ensuring their habits don’t harm the planet will ensure a shift in how energy is made, consumed and tracked.
That’s the brave new world Morten Albaek envisions as he considers the “puzzle” that is the energy mix today. Albaek is Global Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Corporate Relations at Vestas, the Denmark-based world leading wind energy company, but his approach to the business of selling wind turbines to the world is based on a fundamental view of the sector’s place in history, and its development. Keep reading →
The US wind industry is on track for a record-breaking year. In August, the American Wind Energy Association announced a milestone 50 GW of capacity and installations will this year beat previous records.
Matt Kaplan, US wind analyst at IHS Emerging Energy Research, estimates that 12 GW will be installed this year. Keep reading →
Organic Rankine Cycle Biomass Power System
The UK government, corporations and the general population find climate change to be a pressing issue and some prominent corporate actors are tapping into global supply chains to power their operations with increasing amounts of renewable energy as a means of curbing carbon emissions. Keep reading →
UK consumers care about price – that much is clear from the Vestas Global Consumer Wind Study 2012. And well they might. Government figures for 2011 show that the annual average electricity bill rose by £36 to £453 from the previous year.
It’s a trend that is never likely to be reversed. Electricity prices started to rise sharply from 2004 when the UK became a net importer of natural gas. Around 28% of the UK’s electricity fleet is gas-fired. This connection between fossil fuel imports and high energy prices is not lost on consumers – 77.5% of GCWS respondents expressed very high or moderately high levels of concern about dependency on fossil fuels. Keep reading →
Fast forward to a vision of Britain in the year 2020: 30% of the UK’s electricity demand will produce zero carbon; utilities will be settling balance sheets to the satisfaction of shareholders; investors will be counting a decent return on investment; government ministers will be celebrating the success of their policies; consumers will be paying reasonable rates to power and light their homes and businesses.
If a week is a long time in politics, eight years is a very short cycle in the energy industry and without an acceleration of government action, the UK is at risk of failing on its target of sourcing 15% of its demand from renewable sources. Every aspect of the dream scenario described above could be reversed. Keep reading →
Global investment in renewable energy capacity hit $237 billion in 2011, outpacing the $223 billion invested in new fossil fuel capacity globally, according to new data prepared by Bloomberg New Energy Finance for Vestas.
Moves by corporations to invest in renewable energy has the support of consumers as well, says a company data set – the Global Consumer Wind Study – also collected for Vestas and published as part of its Energy Transparency 2012 effort. Breaking Energy has partnered with Vestas on the Energy Transparency campaign as well. Read more about it here. Keep reading →
The full CREX 2012 and GCWS 2012 reports are available now http://bit.ly/U26R94 #energytransparency2012 Vestas
The UK has abundant wind resources from the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea that buffet the country’s coastlines, and despite current disagreement at the governmental level regarding renewable energy policy, a majority of people surveyed support greater renewable energy use over the next five years. Keep reading →
Over the past 18 months, renewable energy has often been the subject of regular attacks in the media, on often shaky grounds, arguing that renewables are and will always be too expensive, they don’t work and people don’t like renewable energy anyway. However, these attacks are at odds with what’s actually happening on the ground.
Not only do the results of the Global Consumer Wind Survey that has just been released by Vestas and TNS show that an increasing number of consumers want renewable energy, there have also been some very positive developments of late on the costs of these technologies. Whilst the cost of many renewable technologies are still high, several technologies like onshore wind and solar PV are rapidly reducing in costs (by 50% alone in 2011 for solar PV according to the Pew Centre) and many other less mature technologies like offshore wind could soon follow this trend. Keep reading →
