Want to invest in a business or startup connected with renewable energy? Before doing so, check the data regarding current renewable energy infrastructure to stay on top!
What is renewable energy? Simply put, such energy is generated from an infinite pool of natural resources. Here, you should imagine sunlight, wind, water currents, and rain, geothermal, biomass, etc. In the nearest future, renewable resources are not going to run out, and, compared to fossil fuels, implementing them does not lead to significant environmental risks while planning urban infrastructure.
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Pluses of Renewable Energy Infrastructure
Several benefits of renewable energy include as follows:
Absence of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
According to the Global Climate Change Panel, renewable energy produces a reduced amount of greenhouse gas emissions. This involves procedures such as: production, installation, functioning, service, and putting out of operation power plants that still use fossil fuels instead of implementing renewable energy sources;
Optimized Environment and Public Health
To generate electricity, people start consuming more renewable energy sources that deliver powerful public health advantages. Power plants that operate using gas and coal as fuel consume a lot of water and also generate air pollution. This can lead to respiratory diseases, heart attacks, brain dysfunction, and even cancer.
On the contrary, the use of renewable energy has a positive outcome for both companies and staff because it helps to minimize not only premature mortality but also entire healthcare expenses.
Renewable energy has nothing in common with the above-mentioned problems. Hydroelectric, solar, and wind energy do not lead to environmental pollution. Though biomass/geothermal energy produces several pollutants, their overall amount is small compared to the pollutants released by fossil fuels.
Moreover, solar and wind energy work without water, so they do not use or contaminate water. Geothermal/biomass-based power plants need water for cooling and they frequently damage water ecosystems.
Economic Advantages
Optimizing the use of renewable energy possesses the power to generate more jobs. In 2021, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis conducted an investigation of the economic pluses of a 31 percent renewable energy standard by 2027. They revealed that such a sustainability policy would generate more than 4 times as many jobs as creating an appropriate quantity of electricity from fossil fuels: getting a benefit of 300 thousand novel jobs in 2027.
Both directly and indirectly, renewable energy produces revenue that can be implemented by governments to help essential public services. Moreover, renewable energy solutions are frequently included in agreements on rent land areas. So, the landowners optimize their incomes with the help of lease invoices. They also create novel sources of income by manufacturing raw materials for biomass facilities.
Renewable Energy Infrastructure: Ambitious Plans of Global Investors
International investors controlling about 8 trillion US dollars of assets intend to nearly double their expenditure on renewable energy infrastructure between 2021 and 2025 due to growing concerns regarding the climate strategy of the fossil fuel industry.
In numerous surveys, global investors appeared to plan to expand their renewable energy financial contributions from 5.1% to 9.1% in 2021-2025 and 11.7% up to 2030 to approximately 801 billion US dollars.
The surveys demonstrate that about a hundred investors (84%), constituting 6.9 trillion US dollars of assets under supervision, doubt that the strategies initiated by gas and oil enterprises would be enough to satisfy the Paris climate agreement targets.
Around 60% of investors in the survey conducted by the analyst of the fund called Octopus Renewables, announced that the oil industry’s contribution on investing in renewables resembles PR but not real actions.
Additionally, this survey depicted that several investors (luckily, the minority) have already delayed the realization of their intentions to give up the gas and oil sector. The reason is the financial ambiguity due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2021, investors have already excluded 5% of fossil fuels from their strategies, compared with 5.4% prediction for 2021 in the survey performed last year. They have also delayed their long-run divestment strategies, from 13.5% within 2021-2025 and 16.1% up to 2030.
According to the Octopus Renewables, energy enterprises, governments, and investors should be willing to establish a partnership to implement the Covid-19 pandemic as a trigger to a greener future.
They should use this unique chance to generate an international post-pandemic economic revitalization that additionally reveals the renewable energy sector to encourage the budget required to cope with climate change.
Several Effective Arguments for Renewable Energy Infrastructure
Three drivers for renewable energy resources to shape our future are considered the following:
- Economic
- Social
- Regulatory
Let’s now go deeper into the subject.
Economic Driver
Tech advancements have significantly reduced the cost of energy manufacture from renewable sources. They witness that renewable resources don’t exceed the full cost connected with traditional fuels on a long-term basis, even with retaining state subsidies. In the nearest future, ongoing research and other investigations in this sphere are supposed to represent several more vital benefits.
Furthermore, as current energy infrastructure is growing older and power plants are taken off line, renewable energy resources are believed to become a cost-efficient alternative that gets the dominant energy source in the coming years.
Social Driver
Key energy consumers are getting more and more concerned when it comes to the carbon mark of their energy source. For example, Google, Apple, and Amazon have signed up contracts with renewable power contractors to deliver data centers and edifices, with the goal of becoming carbon neutral in the period between 2024 and 2030.
Individually, consumers become aware of their carbon influence, choosing low carbon energy resources, identifying a transformation in social tastes.
Regulatory Trigger
The international policy landscape is undergoing a large number of changes because states, as well as local authorities, foster the implementation of innovative solutions with low/zero CO2 manufacture. A clearly defined cost control structure takes place because the opinions of key stakeholders are included in mandates, and they all plan to reduce their impact on the environment.
Taking into account the significant influence of the UN Sustainability Goals, the renewable energy infrastructure delivers a relevant addition to the investments already planned in terms of governance, social, and environmental side.
