Renewable Energy Resource

[synodbio]

Renewable energy technologies are clean sources of energy that have a much lower environmental impact than conventional energy technologies. What is the future of Renewable Energy Resource?

[mal4mac]

Renewable energy technologies are clean sources of energy that have a much lower environmental impact than conventional energy technologies. What is the future of Renewable Energy Resource?

After the Fukushima incident, the future of Renewable Energy Resources seems very good. Japan is now very wary of nuclear power, and Germany will have no nuclear plants after 2022. The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 25 percent in the first half of 2012.

There is a strong argument for thinking that (even) solar power will, quickly, become cheaper than nuclear:

http://www.renewablesinternational.net/the-cost-of-german-solar-versus-nuclear/150/537/62779/

And once it is cheaper, then why would you mess around with something as dangerous as nuclear? Also, if there's another Fukishima, nuclear may be rejected across the board, so all countries have to maintain some drive towards using renewables.

[kev67]

That is a massive question. It depends on all sorts of political decisions and economic incentives. There's an online book called Sustainability Without the Hot Air (http://www.withouthotair.com/) which explains in simple arithmetic terms what the renewable energy resource is in the UK. If you don't live in the the UK, you can use the equations to work out the numbers for your own country.

[synodbio]

Thanks to cost-saving technologies and economies of scale, price can no longer be an excuse to invest in nuclear power rather than solar.