Renewable energy set to be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020, according to new report

According to a new report, renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels in two years, Experts predict that investment in green infrastructure projects will lead to decreases in the cost of energy for consumers. 

IRENA believes there are three main reasons why this will happen: improvements in technology, a competitive market, and more experienced developers in the industry. The more renewable energy capacity increases, the further it will lower electrical costs. As it doubles, investment drops by nine percent and electricity generation costs drop by 15 percent.

Continuous technological improvements have led to a rapid fall in the cost of renewable energy in recent years, meaning some forms can already comfortably compete with fossil fuels.

The report suggests this trend will continue, and that by 2020 “all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range”. The report looked specifically at the relative cost of new energy projects being commissioned.

Prices could be as low as three cents per kilowatt-hour for onshore wind and solar photovoltaic projects over the next two years. When renewable energy becomes cheaper, consumers will benefit from investment in green infrastructure. The current cost for fossil fuel power generation ranges from around 4p to 12p per kilowatt hour across G20 countries.

“This new dynamic signals a significant shift in the energy paradigm,” said Adnan Amin, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA), which published the report.

Of those technologies, most will either be at the lower end of the cost range or actually undercutting fossil fuels.

“Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now – overwhelmingly – a smart economic one.”

“If the stuff you’re building to generate electricity costs less, the end effect of that is having to pay less for the electricity that comes from it,” Jonathan Marshall, energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) told The Independent.

Even though much of the focus was on solar and wind, hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal sources were all part of the ongoing process to make renewable energy a more viable option.

“The cheaper you install it, the better it is for everyone.”

Amazon to Plug into Five Utility-Scale Solar Projects in Step toward 2040 Net-Zero

Online retail giant Amazon has announced plans for five PV projects totaling 615MW in three countries i.e. Australia, China, US, to support its commitment to reaching 80% renewable energy by 2024 for its operations and net-zero carbon across its international network of facilities by 2040.

The retail giant has provided the detail on five new renewable energy projects it hopes will supply approximately 1.2 million MWh of additional renewable energy to its fulfilment network and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres. 

The projects – 105MW in New South Wales, Australia, 100MW in Shandong, China, and 410MW in the states of Ohio and Virginia in the US – will supply 1.2 million MWh of solar power to its warehouses and Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) data centres that support its global cloud computing services.

AWS Australia and New Zealand commercial sector managing director Adam Beavis touted this as enough to power the equivalent of 40,000 average Australian homes. Vice president of sustainability at Amazon Kara Hurst said its 2030 milestone could be reached as early as 2025, noting that while the goal will be challenging, the company has a "credible plan to get there".

To date, Amazon has announced 31 utility-scale solar and wind projects and 60 PV rooftops on fulfillment centres and sort centres around the globe, together amounting to a almost 3GW of capacity.

In the US, AWS had contracted 733MW of wind capacity at the end of 2019, sixth among companies behind Google, Facebook, Walmart, AT&T and Microsoft.

According to analyst group BNEF, Corporations globally bought a record of almost 20GW of wind and solar generation through power production agreements last year, which is a leap of 44% from 2018. This has emerged as a key driver in the accelerating global energy transition.

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https://www.reonenergy.com/our-projects/

Dealing Karachi’s Energy Crisis

Karachi is the economic hub of Pakistan, but the city is facing a massive energy crisis, which needs to be dealt on an urgent basis. To remain viable in the coming years as the highest contributor to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), a strategic energy road-map needs to be devised for the city under a comprehensive framework.

In this spectrum, creating the right benchmarks is crucial. To improve technological expertise within the sector, four components are needed to be simultaneously inter-connected:

• Human resources
• Research
• Development
• Investment

Moreover, providing incentives for the private sector must be the top priority, followed by research-based target setting, bench-marking, and finally enacting the appropriate legislation. 

Despite its geographic scale, the strategic advantage that Karachi has over other cities is that it can leverage a viable energy programme through a transition to renewable energy since it possesses almost all possible renewable energy resources, namely: wind power (inland and offshore), biomass energy production, wave and tidal energy, solar (photovoltaic) power, and waste to energy. And one of the leading solar energy company, Reon Energy, is fully capitalizing the true potential of solar energy and working with different companies, which are seeking for solar energy solutions.

In recent years, Karachi has faced a directional crisis. Instead of focusing on the above mentioned potential avenue. Despite the world moving away from coal production as a source of power, policies for imported coal for energy generation have been developed.

Coal is counter-productive as a power source since it loses the majority of its energy due to high emissions in the coal extraction phase, making it a very expensive source of energy to rely on. As a result, we are unable to comprehend the economic and human loss to our city incurred due to coal extraction.

The ambitious claims of the government to re-shape Karachi’s energy sector are commendable. But that doesn’t reflect the ongoing state of the city. One major concern for our city is the complete absence of research. Instead of building internal capacities, we have resorted to importing equipment from China and other countries, thereby reducing our academic and scientific capability when it comes to solving the energy crisis.

The future energy road-map for Karachi requires a balanced mix of legislation, fiscal instruments, regulations and ordinances, creating a regulatory framework, and introducing the required financial incentives.