For the First Time In 3 Years, Investments In Renewable Energy Increased

Lucas123 writes: Driven largely by oil price weakness, 2015 could be the best year to date for investments in renewable energy technology, according to several new reports. According to Bloomberg Energy Finance, new funding for wind, solar, biofuels and other low-carbon energy technologies grew 16% to $310 billion last year. It was the first growth since 2011 (PDF), erasing the impact of lower solar-panel prices and falling subsides in the U.S. and Europe that hurt the industry in previous years. Demand for solar power grew 16% year-over-year in 2014, representing 44 gigawatts of capacity purchased during the year. Worldwide solar demand in 2015 is projected to be 51.4GW, compared with 39GW in 2014. Government policies will continue to improve for renewables — solar, in particular — given that anti-dumping duties imposed on Chinese modules by the U.S. last year are expected to be removed this year, Deutsche Bank said.

Comments

Re:Huh?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

... or even build pipelines to ship it to you. Energy independence? Only if it fits an environmentalist agenda for some people.

Canada does not need Keystone XL to ship oil to the USA. Already enough pipelines exist to ship crude to US refineries. It needs Keystone XL to access the ports in Gulf of Mexico to export it to other countries. Keystone XL will create about 2000 temporary jobs to build and about 100 permanent jobs to maintain it. But if we force Canada to ship crude to USA, and we do the refining and then export value added products to rest of the world, there would be 10000 permanent jobs in the USA. What Canada really wants is a cheap way to gets its crude to places where there is no pollution control, no labor safety and low wages to do the refining.

10000 jobs works out to about 1 billion in wages. Cost of pollution abatement and labor safety would add another four of five billion a year. To save that money and funnel it to the top executives as bonuses and pay rises, they are engaging in scorched earth politics and divisive rhetoric.

Why export crude? Build the damned refineries in the tar sands. Capture the pollutants and bury it back where you dug the crude out. You have permanent jobs and all the profits that could be made in refining the oil too.

Oh, I get it. Your crude is too expensive to be refined safely paying decent wages to the workers and without causing too much of pollution. All that talk about USA's energy independence and enviro - nazis, all that rhetoric is to basically mask these facts: Canadian tar sands crude is extremely dirty. It has no market value unless you cut pollution abatements, labor safety and wages.