Energy future rests on subsidies, China
Considering the serious energy and climate concerns raised in the International Energy Agency’s latest “World Energy Outlook,” you’d think we as a society would feel a lot more urgency about developing clean, renewable energy sources. Then again, take one look at the lopsided financial picture — $312 billion in subsidies for fossil fuel consumption in 2009, versus $57 billion for clean energy — and you might be amazed that we’re developing any renewables at all.
On the positive side, government support for clean energy has been growing recently: in 2007, subsidies for renewables were just $41 billion. But a lot more money needs to be thrown at green energy if we want a sustainable, climate-stable future.
“Large-scale government support is needed to make renewables cost competitive with other energy sources and technologies and to stimulate the required technological advances,” the IEA states. Its 2010 outlook projects clean-energy subsidies rising to $205 billion a year by 2035 under its best-case scenario.
From Spain, Germany, the UK and Italy to the US and China, government support has already made a difference, with companies from those countries now among the top 10 largest developers of renewable electricity.
And who are those companies? Because wind, tide and solar power are typically fed into the electricity grid alongside electricity from coal-fired and nuclear plants, it shouldn’t be surprising that the biggest clean-electricity producers are also the leading traditional power utilities.
Topping the global leaderboard is Spain’s Iberdrola, whose Iberdrola Renovables is the world’s largest producer of wind energy. As of late 2010, it’s got a total installed renewable capacity of 12,006 megawatts, mostly in Spain, the US and the UK. Coming in second is the US’s NextEra Energy (Florida Power & Light Company) with 7,717 megawatts of wind and solar capacity and, in third place, China Guodian Corporation, with 5,395 megawatts of wind capacity.
No matter what the source, China’s clean-energy star is rising fast. It now boasts three of the world’s top 10 renewable-electricity producers, three of the top 10 wind-turbine manufacturers and four of the 10 largest solar-cell makers (five, if you count Chinese Taipei).
“It’s hard to overstate the growing importance of China in global energy markets,” states the “World Energy Outlook 2010.” “Given the sheer scale of China’s domestic market, its push to increase the share of new low-carbon energy technologies could play an important role in driving down their costs through faster rates of technology learning and economies of scale.”
