The country’s big corporations have shown a heartening appetite for green power.
As outlined in a recent Bloomberg report, clean electricity sales to corporations topped 3Gw through April, clean electricity sales to corporations topped 3Gw through April, leaving the year-long forecast at 9Gw.
This smashes the previous year’s record of 4.8Gw.
The big businesses do have a clear advantage when it comes to green power purchasing.
Their size and business processes make it more straightforward to turn to the energy and, if necessary, sink a loss.
However, this doesn’t mean small and medium sized enterprises shouldn’t get involved, too – switching to green energy is becoming more cost effective by the year.
Financing the Switch Over
Green energy can sometimes entail the use of special equipments.
Other times, a business may wish to generate their own electricity, and this is certainly viable in warmer states where solar panels are effective due to many solar hours per day.
The government, private lenders and green startups have provided an environment in which investing into a green setup is viable.
Firstly, consider government subsidies. According to Forbes contributor Bill Maloney, the U.S. government spends $11bn per year on renewable subsidies.
Consider this as part of your green setup – there’s a good chance that equipment and purchases will be at a subsidized rate and, when compared to fossil fuels, are more cost effective.
Secondly, there’s a real trend in the investment and banking sector towards green finances.
Amid interest rates that are already generally favorable, many institutions offer green tailored loans with features and promotions as a way to acquire ethical funding.
These ultimately provide a better service towards people using them for environmental improvements to their business.
Will A Move to Green Remain Sustainable?
Green energy has previously labored under the impression that it remains expensive.
Today, the opposite is true. The World Economic Forum have noted that the average cost of renewables has dropped 86% since 2009, making it today cheaper than coal or any other fossil fuel – in addition to nuclear.
Will this trend continue? The evidence suggests so.
According to Forbes, renewables now cost just $0.04 per kWh and that price is reducing.
What will shape the long term sustainability of renewable power is storage. Currently, renewable power is suffering from poor storage innovation.
Renewables, unlike fossil fuels, cannot be activated on demand, and this causes states such as Texas to resort to gas turbines when the wind slows down.
The good news is that there is plenty of work being done in the sector to address this gap. Siemens have recently developed a ammonia storage method for renewable energy, and Elon Musks’ Tesla have been developing home and business batteries for a few years now. With continued investment, the drop in renewable prices will continue and create a cost effective alternative to fossil fuels for SME.
Conclusion
Solving the storage problem is the biggest headache in renewable energy, but that doesn’t detract from the excellent progress so far.
Big corporations are showing the way when it comes to adapting renewable power, and now, small and medium businesses should follow suit. Doing so is cost effective, responsible, and all in all the right thing to do.
