The Green Power Exchange Business Case: The Rise and Rise of Renewables and Growing Consumer Demand
Forecasted renewables expansion
An unprecedented rise in global renewable energy deployment has enabled solar and wind power to drastically increase their presence across both developed and emerging economies. This exceptional growth has occurred over the past 10 years and is expected to continue for the next three decades. Renewable power generating capacity saw its largest annual increase ever in 2016, with 161GW of capacity added. Solar PV alone represented more than 45% of newly installed renewable capacity in 2016, with wind the second largest contributor at 34%.
In 2016, the total global energy production was estimated at 24,767TWh, with renewables providing enough electricity to supply 24.5% of that global production total. Global investment in renewables stood at $241.6 billion in 2016 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Looking forward, there is a particularly bright future for wind and solar in the years leading to
2022, based on research conducted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2017.
With global power demand anticipated to grow 58% between 2017 and 2040, BNEF predict $10.2 trillion will be invested in new power generation capacity worldwide to 2040, with a significant 72% of this total investment, or $7.4 trillion, going to renewables. Of this total, solar and wind will take the leading share with investments of $2.8 trillion and 3.3 trillion respectively. Additionally, solar and wind will account for 48% of installed capacity and 34% of electricity generation worldwide by 2040 as the two technologies begin to undercut coal plants on an operational basis by 2030. The reason for the growth in renewables over fossil fuels is simple: In most jurisdictions, renewables are becoming as cost effective or even lower cost than fossil fuel-based power plants.
Increasing consumer demand for green power
There has been a significant growth in the demand for renewable electricity from residential consumers and businesses alike. Demand for renewable electricity documented with Guarantees of Origin (GOs), or Green Certificates, reached almost 500TWh’s in 2017 in Europe alone.
Additionally, demand for green energy is very high among the general population in the US, and particularly among millennials. Identified in the study below, Green Champions are primarily people born after 1980 and 90% support green energy expansion, 73% would even pay an additional $5 per month in power bills. Acceptance among the general population is also very high, with 82%:
For more information on how Green Power Exchange plans to capitalize on growing renewables volume and rising demand for green power, please refer to our earlier blogs, that can be found on our Medium channel: https://bit.ly/2L0k9Tb or our white paper: http://bit.ly/GPXWhiteP
