Managing your energy consumption could be very challenging predominantly during present electricity tariff and escalation of oil & gas prices. With the increasing of other production cost such as raw material and labour, reducing the energy cost may the only way for the company to remain competitive and stay in the business. This blog discusses all related issues in managing your energy consumption efficiently and in a systematic way.

Blog ini membincangkan mengenai sistem pengurusan tenaga dan pengunaan tenaga dengan cekap.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Eight Emerging Large-Scale Clean Energy Sectors

This article is taken from the 'The Green Investing: Towards a Clean Energy Infrastructure Report', published by the World Economic Forum with the collaboration with New Energy Finance.

The four-year surge in investment activity in clean energy has spanned all sectors, all geographies and all asset
classes. What has begun to emerge as a result is  shape of the new lower-carbon energy infrastructure. No one can describe with certainty what the world’s energy system will look like in 2050. A substantial proportion of our energy will undoubtedly still be supplied by fossil fuels, but we can now be fairly certain that a future low-carbon energy system will include a meaningful contribution from the following eight renewable energy sources:
1. Onshore Wind
2. Offshore Wind
3. Solar Photovoltaic (PV)
4. Solar Thermal Electricity Generation (STEG)
5. Municipal Solid Waste-to-Energy (MSW)
6. Sugar-based Ethanol
7. Cellulosic and Next Generation Biofuels
8. Geothermal Power
Although these energy technologies – which constitute only a subset of the full range of opportunities – may not yet be fully cost competitive with fossil fuels, the economics of experience curves and oil and gas depletion are working powerfully to level the playing field. Renewable energy technologies are becoming cheaper
as they reach scale and operating experience. This trend has been obscured recently by surging commodity prices and supply chain bottlenecks, but with new industrial capacity coming on-line we are about to see prices drop as they come back in line with costs now that we are moving into a buyer's market. Solar PV electricity costs may become comparable with daytime retail electricity prices in many sunny parts of the world in the next 12 to 36 months, even without subsidies. Wind is already cost competitive with natural gas-fired electricity generation in certain locations without subsidies. Renewable energy is not generally subject to risks associated with fuel input costs. Increasing fuel prices by 20% increases the costs of generation by 16% for gas and 6% for coal while leaving renewable energy technologies practically untouched. The volatility of fuel prices alone should act to encourage utilities to build some proportion of renewable energy into their portfolios. And higher capital costs for many renewable energy technologies – and no fuel costs – mean that they will benefit more from reductions in effective interest rates than natural gas or coal. Indeed, in a world in which effective interest rates for energy projects drop 300 basis points, while fuel prices and carbon credit prices each rise by 20%, onshore wind becomes cheaper than natural gas, and geothermal and waste-to-energy not only beat natural gas, but are even cheaper than coal based power. Nuclear power is also set for a renaissance in many countries around the world. Nuclear’s share of total electricity production has remained steady at around 16% since the 1980s. Its contribution is clearly set to grow over the medium to long term, although it will always be limited by issues of cost, storage, safety and public resistance.

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