Renewable energy systems have rapidly become more efficient and cheaper over the past 30 years. A large majority of worldwide newly installed electricity capacity is now renewable. In most countries, photovoltaic solar or onshore wind are the cheapest new-build electricity. From 2011 to 2021, renewable energy grew from 20% to 28% of global electricity supply. Power from sun and wind accounted for most of this increase, growing from a combined 2% to 10%. Use of fossil energy shrank from 68% to 62%. In 2022, renewables accounted for 30% of global electricity generation, and are projected to reach over 42% by 2028. Many countries already have renewables contributing more than 20% of their total energy supply, with some generating over half or even all their electricity from renewable sources.
The main motivation to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is to slow and eventually stop climate change, which is widely agreed to be caused mostly by greenhouse gas emissions. In general, renewable energy sources cause much lower emissions than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, 90% of global electricity generation will need to be produced from renewable sources. Renewables also cause much less air pollution than fossil fuels, improving public health, and are less noisy.
The deployment of renewable energy still faces obstacles, especially fossil fuel subsidies, lobbying by incumbent power providers, and local opposition to the use of land for renewables installations. Like all mining, the extraction of minerals required for many renewable energy technologies also results in environmental damage. In addition, although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not. For example, some biomass sources are unsustainable at current rates of exploitation. (Full article...)
As of 2021, global installed capacity of concentrated solar power stood at 6.8 GW. As of 2023, the total was 8.1 GW, with the inclusion of three new CSP projects in construction in China and in Dubai in the UAE. The U.S.-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which maintains a global database of CSP plants, counts 6.6 GW of operational capacity and another 1.5 GW under construction. (Full article...)
"People do not want electricity or oil ... but rather comfortable rooms, light, vehicular motion, food, tables, and other real things."
"There exists today a body of energy technologies that have certain specific features in common and that offer great technical, economic, and political attractions ... 'soft' energy technologies [which are] flexible, resilient, sustainable, and benign. They rely on renewable energy flows that are always there whether we use them of not, such as sun and wind and vegetation."
"Soft technologies' matching of energy quality to end-use needs virtually eliminates the costs and losses of secondary energy conversion, [and] the appropriate scale of soft technologies can virtually eliminate the costs and losses of energy distribution."
– Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, 1977, pp. 38–40.
... that the Exelon Pavilions, a set of four solar energy generating structures in Millennium Park of Chicago, provide sufficient energy to power the equivalent of 14 star-rated energy-efficient houses in Chicago ? In addition to producing energy, three of the four pavilions provide access to the park's below ground parking garages and the fourth serves as the park's welcoming center. Exelon, a company that generates the electricity transmitted by its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison, donated approximately $5–6 million for the Pavilions.
The following are images from various renewable energy-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Share of electricity production from wind, 2022 (from Wind power)
Image 2Enhanced geothermal system 1:Reservoir 2:Pump house 3:Heat exchanger 4:Turbine hall 5:Production well 6:Injection well 7:Hot water to district heating 8:Porous sediments 9:Observation well 10:Crystalline bedrock (from Geothermal energy)
Image 13Wind turbines such as these, in Cumbria, England, have been opposed for a number of reasons, including aesthetics, by some sectors of the population. (from Wind power)
Image 14Global geothermal electric capacity. Upper red line is installed capacity; lower green line is realized production. (from Geothermal energy)
Image 16Museum Hydroelectric power plant "Under the Town" in Užice, Serbia, built in 1900. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 17Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)
Image 18Global map of wind speed at 100 meters on land and around coasts. (from Wind power)
Image 19Krafla Geothermal Station in northeast Iceland (from Geothermal energy)
Image 20A panoramic view of the United Kingdom's Whitelee Wind Farm with Lochgoin Reservoir in the foreground. (from Wind power)
Image 21Electricity generation at Poihipi, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 22The Hoover Dam in the United States is a large conventional dammed-hydro facility, with an installed capacity of 2,080 MW. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 34Distribution of wind speed (red) and energy (blue) for all of 2002 at the Lee Ranch facility in Colorado. The histogram shows measured data, while the curve is the Rayleigh model distribution for the same average wind speed. (from Wind power)
Image 35Seasonal cycle of capacity factors for wind and photovoltaics in Europe under idealized assumptions. The figure illustrates the balancing effects of wind and solar energy at the seasonal scale (Kaspar et al., 2019). (from Wind power)
Image 36A turbine blade convoy passing through Edenfield in the U.K. (2008). Even longer 2-piece blades are now manufactured, and then assembled on-site to reduce difficulties in transportation. (from Wind power)
Image 44Merowe Dam in Sudan. Hydroelectric power stations that use dams submerge large areas of land due to the requirement of a reservoir. These changes to land color or albedo, alongside certain projects that concurrently submerge rainforests, can in these specific cases result in the global warming impact, or equivalent life-cycle greenhouse gases of hydroelectricity projects, to potentially exceed that of coal power stations. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 50Acceptance of wind and solar facilities in one's community is stronger among U.S. Democrats (blue), while acceptance of nuclear power plants is stronger among U.S. Republicans (red). (from Wind power)
Image 57The Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 58Greenhouses like these in the Westland municipality of the Netherlands grow vegetables, fruits and flowers. (from Solar energy)
Image 59Global map of wind power density potential (from Wind power)
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![Image 17Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)](/wiki/File:Photo_of_the_Week-_Boosting_Solar_Technology_(8722948189).jpg)
