United States Attractive For Renewable Energy Investment
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According to Renewable Energy Focus, the United States remains the most attractive country in the world for renewable energy, although it now ties the top spot with China.
The US scores 69 for ‘all renewables’ and 70 for wind (75 onshore and 57 offshore wind), according to the latest quarterly ‘Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indices’ produced by Ernst & Young. It receives a 73 for solar (72 for solar PV and 75 for solar CSP), 63 for biomass, 67 for geothermal and 65 for infrastructure.
In the February ranking, the US scored in first place.
China has moved from second place to tie for first with a 69 for ‘all renewables’, 74 for wind (77 onshore, 66 offshore), 59 for solar (66 PV and 40 CSP), 57 for biomass, 51 for geothermal and 74 for infrastructure.
Germany stayed in third place with 64 overall, India remained in fourth with 63, Italy continues in fifth with 61, but the UK moves up one spot to fifth with a 61, France moves from eighth to seventh with 58, while Spain drops from sixth to eighth place with a 57 overall.
Canada and Portugal retain their ninth and tenth spot rankings, with respective overall scores of 53 and 51. Ireland, Greece, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark and Norway complete the top-20 spots.
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Considering the USA uses more oil than any other nation, developed or otherwise, I guess championing renewable energy isn’t a bad call. If the oil runs out you’re first in line for “Oh shit! Where’d the oil go?”….
I keep thinking businesses will increasingly be on line more and more making business travel less and less important. Much like snail mail is hardly used anymore except by direct marketing campaigns (ie junk mail) as its expense is prohibitive, and its waits appalling.
Trains are a better option, but major infrastructure changes would have to occur. Personally, I live in a small enough community that I can bike the 2 miles or less anywhere in town I need to go. It isn’t convenient, but I could do it (and did when gas was $4 a gallon)
What are the best alternatives for transportaion? Natural gas? Electric cars? I’m also wondering about air travel. What are the alternatives there?
This is the crux of the problem, Will; what can replace petroleum as a portable medium of energy storage?
Long term, battery-powered cars are probably the way to go for ground transportation. Natural gas only ties us to another exhaustible supply. But that implies we will have to build out our power grid to supply enough juice to drive all of those cars.
Air travel is … problematic. A difficult problem, but not totally impossible. At last year’s EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh, there was a fuel-cell powered airplane, so I know that electric airplanes are possible at least on a small scale. Scaling that up is going to be tough. To drive something the size of a passenger plane, you’d have to deliver on the order of 100MW of power. How you do that for 8-10 hours at a stretch without hydrocarbons is a very interesting question…
Well looks like the World realizes oil is not sustainable.
Now if we can just get serious about it. Something like a Manhattan Project.