Comments on: Top Countries For Renewable Energy Capacity

By: Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 22:14:37 +0000

Total investment in solar in 2011 increased 52% to $147 billion, driven by a drop of 50% in photovoltaic module prices. Investment in wind dropped 12% to $84 billion, while onshore wind turbine prices fell between 5 and 10%…

By: Solar Power Market Solutions For Hundreds of Millions Without Electricity at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:56:51 +0000

400 million people in India and 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have electric power at home. Mera Gao Power provides a wonderful market solution…

By: Global Wind Energy Capacity Exceeds 2.5% of Global Electricity Needs at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:11:06 +0000

In 2007 wind energy capacity reached 1% of global electricity needs. In just 4 years wind energy capacity has grown to reach 2.5% of global electricity demand. And by the end of 2011 it will be close to 3%…

By: Largest Petroleum Consuming Countries from 1980 to 2010 at Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:39:58 +0000

From 1980 to 2010 the global consumption increased 38% to 87 million barrels a day. In the same period, USA consumption increased 12%. Meanwhile, Germany, Japan and France decreased petroleum use by 19%, 17% and 10% respectively.

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:16:06 +0000

Technology based on micro-circuitry that we see in our everyday lives grows explosively. There is plenty of technology that isn't deployed yet in large amounts that seems to always be a decade or two or three away. Solar and high volume wind power have been in this second state for awhile now. Both are approaching the point where they are improving dramatically but there are two big problems now (the technologies for each has reached very good economic conditions on their own merits). The infrastructure of our power systems for the country is not designed to take advantage of this technology and battery storage is still not great (improving dramatically but still quite a bit is needed). My guess is we will see solar exploding in use over the next 2 decades worldwide. The main constraint in the USA will be the existing infrastructure not allowing bi-directional power easily (so we can't give excess power generated back to the system). If battery power has huge breakthroughs that will accelerate the adoption of solar greatly. Alternative solar will also explode. Things like: solar thermal - Molten Salt Solar - solar dish.

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:05:42 +0000

I have absolutely no knowledge in this area, but maybe you can help me out. We have had solar power for 30 or so years…why hasn’t it is grew exponentially like every other technology!?

By: Andrew Lowry

Andrew Lowry — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 03:38:25 +0000

Thank-you for the interesting post. I took a scan through the PEW report. Interesting. It is unfortunate that they rate by capacity rather than GWH production which would show how effective the installed capacity is doing. Also it would interesting to see the % of overall installed capacity versus the other all generation mix. China is building lots of coal and gas and nuclear at the same time. I note in the Pew Report that Small Hydro seems to get reference only in the country pages. China, page 26 & 34, produced the majority of the clean energy gains from small hydro (56 out of 103 GW) which is not surprising for a large country that is industrializing. The country tables showing the investment with the energy types on the same page. It shows the much lower investment required for biomass and geothermal than wind and then the huge jump in investment cost for solar. Need to get the energy capture rate greatly increased on solar. Again interesting stuff I just wish the report said a bit more about how this all fits into the bigger picture.