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The Future of Sustainable Energy

26 June, 2021

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Building a sustainable energy future calls for leaps forward in both technology and policy leadership. State governments, major corporations and nations around the world have pledged to address the worsening climate crisis by transitioning to 100% renewable energy over the next few decades. Turning those statements of intention into a reality means undertaking unprecedented efforts and collaboration between disciplines ranging from environmental science to economics.

There are highly promising opportunities for green initiatives that could deliver a better future. However, making a lasting difference will require both new technology and experts who can help governments and organizations transition to more sustainable practices. These leaders will be needed to source renewables efficiently and create environmentally friendly policies, as well as educate consumers and policymakers. To maximize their impact, they must make decisions informed by the most advanced research in clean energy technology, economics, and finance.

Current Trends in Sustainability

The imperative to adopt renewable power solutions on a worldwide scale continues to grow even more urgent as the global average surface temperature hits historic highs and amplifies the danger from extreme weather events . In many regions, the average temperature has already increased by 1.5 degrees , and experts predict that additional warming could drive further heatwaves, droughts, severe hurricanes, wildfires, sea level rises, and even mass extinctions.

In addition, physicians warn that failure to respond to this dire situation could unleash novel diseases : Dr. Rexford Ahima and Dr. Arturo Casadevall of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine contributed to an article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that explained how climate change could affect the human body’s ability to regulate its own temperature while bringing about infectious microbes that adapt to the warmer conditions.

World leaders have accepted that greenhouse gas emissions are a serious problem that must be addressed. Since the Paris Agreement was first adopted in December 2015, 197 nations have signed on to its framework for combating climate change and preventing the global temperature increase from reaching 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels.

Corporate giants made their own commitments to become carbon neutral by funding offsets to reduce greenhouse gases and gradually transitioning into using 100% renewable energy. Google declared its operations carbon neutral in 2017 and has promised that all data centers and campuses will be carbon-free by 2030. Facebook stated that it would eliminate its carbon footprint in 2020 and expand that commitment to all the organization’s suppliers within 10 years. Amazon ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles and has promised that its sprawling logistics operations will arrive at net-zero emissions by 2040.

Despite these promising developments, many experts say that nations and businesses are still not changing fast enough. While carbon neutrality pledges are a step in the right direction, they don’t mean that organizations have actually stopped using fossil fuels . And despite the intentions expressed by Paris Agreement signatories, total annual carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high of 33.5 gigatons in 2018, led by China, the U.S., and India.

“The problem is that what we need to achieve is so daunting and taxes our resources so much that we end up with a situation that’s much, much worse than if we had focused our efforts,” Ferraro said.

Recent Breakthroughs in Renewable Power

An environmentally sustainable infrastructure requires innovations in transportation, industry, and utilities. Fortunately, researchers in the private and public sectors are laying the groundwork for an energy transformation that could make the renewable energy of the future more widely accessible and efficient.

Some of the most promising areas that have seen major developments in recent years include:

Driving Electric Vehicles Forward

The technical capabilities of electric cars are taking great strides, and the popularity of these vehicles is also growing among consumers. At Tesla’s September 22, 2020 Battery Day event, Elon Musk announced the company’s plans for new batteries that can be manufactured at a lower cost while offering greater range and increased power output .

The electric car market has seen continuing expansion in Europe even during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks in large part to generous government subsidies. Market experts once predicted that it would take until 2025 for electric car prices to reach parity with gasoline-powered vehicles. However, growing sales and new battery technology could greatly speed up that timetable .

Cost-Effective Storage For Renewable Power

One of the biggest hurdles in the way of embracing 100% renewable energy has been the need to adjust supply based on demand. Utilities providers need efficient, cost-effective ways of storing solar and wind power so that electricity is available regardless of weather conditions. Most electricity storage currently takes place in pumped-storage hydropower plants, but these facilities require multiple reservoirs at different elevations.

Pumped thermal electricity storage is an inexpensive solution to get around both the geographic limitations of hydropower and high costs of batteries. This approach, which is currently being tested , uses a pump to convert electricity into heat so it can be stored in a material like gravel, water, or molten salts and kept in an insulated tank. A heat engine converts the heat back into electricity as necessary to meet demand.

Unlocking the Potential of Microgrids

Microgrids are another area of research that could prove invaluable to the future of power. These systems can operate autonomously from a traditional electrical grid, delivering electricity to homes and business even when there’s an outage. By using this approach with power sources like solar, wind, or biomass, microgrids can make renewable energy transmission more efficient.

Researchers in public policy and engineering are exploring how microgrids could serve to bring clean electricity to remote, rural areas . One early effort in the Netherlands found that communities could become 90% energy self-sufficient , and solar-powered microgrids have now also been employed in Indian villages. This technology has enormous potential to change the way we access electricity, but lowering costs is an essential step to bring about wider adoption and encourage residents to use the power for purposes beyond basic lighting and cooling.

Advancing the Future of Sustainable Energy

There’s still monumental work to be done in developing the next generation of renewable energy solutions as well as the policy framework to eliminate greenhouse gases from our atmosphere. An analysis from the International Energy Agency found that the technologies currently on the market can only get the world halfway to the reductions needed for net-zero emissions by 2050.

To make it the rest of the way, researchers and policymakers must still explore possibilities such as:

• Devise and implement large-scale carbon capture systems that store and use carbon dioxide without polluting the atmosphere
• Establish low-carbon electricity as the primary power source for everyday applications like powering vehicles and heat in buildings
• Grow the use of bioenergy harnessed from plants and algae for electricity, heat, transportation, and manufacturing
• Implement zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells as a way to power transportation and utilities

However, even revolutionary technology will not do the job alone. Ambitious goals for renewable energy solutions and long-term cuts in emissions also demand enhanced international cooperation, especially among the biggest polluters. That’s why Jonas Nahm of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies has focused much of his research on China’s sustainable energy efforts. He has also argued that the international community should recognize China’s pivotal role in any long-term plans for fighting climate change.

As both the leading emitter of carbon dioxide and the No. 1 producer of wind and solar energy, China is uniquely positioned to determine the future of sustainability initiatives. According to Nahm, the key to making collaboration with China work is understanding the complexities of the Chinese political and economic dynamics. Because of conflicting interests on the national and local levels, the world’s most populous nation continues to power its industries with coal even while President Xi Jinping advocates for fully embracing green alternatives.

China’s fraught position demonstrates that economics and diplomacy could prove to be just as important as technical ingenuity in creating a better future. International cooperation must guide a wide-ranging economic transformation that involves countries and organizations increasing their capacity for producing and storing renewable energy.

It will take strategic thinking and massive investment to realize a vision of a world where utilities produce 100% renewable power while rows of fully electric cars travel on smart highways. To meet the challenge of our generation, it’s more crucial than ever to develop leaders who understand how to apply the latest research to inform policy and who can take charge of globe-spanning sustainable energy initiatives .

About the MA in Sustainable Energy (online) Program at Johns Hopkins SAIS

Created by Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies faculty with input from industry experts and employers, the Master of Arts in Sustainable Energy (online) program is tailored for the demands of a rapidly evolving sector. As a top-11 global university, Johns Hopkins is uniquely positioned to equip graduates with the skills they need to confront global challenges in the transition to renewable energy.

The MA in Sustainable Energy curriculum is designed to build expertise in finance, economics, and policy. Courses from our faculty of highly experienced researchers and practitioners prepare graduates to excel in professional environments including government agencies, utility companies, energy trade organizations, global energy governance organizations, and more. Students in the Johns Hopkins SAIS benefit from industry connections, an engaged network of more than 230,000 alumni, and high-touch career services.

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Fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas supply 80 percent of the world’s energy to warm homes, charge devices and power transportation. They are also the primary human source of greenhouse gas emissions. Stanford scientists broadly agree that curtailing our use of fossil fuels would have significant benefits – like improving health and reducing the number and severity of natural disasters – but it’s not yet clear what can replace them.

Wind and solar are increasingly popular sources of energy, but the sun does not always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. Batteries to store their intermittent energy are not yet cheap and powerful enough to fill the gaps. Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases directly, but the current generation of reactors has other problems. Solutions like storing carbon dioxide underground or turning it into clean fuel are promising, but they also need much development. None of the possible solutions is without challenges.

Eight Stanford researchers describe how, among these many developing options, they envision the world becoming less reliant on fossil fuels. Nobel physicist and former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu,  a professor of physics and of cellular and molecular biology at Stanford, outlines the broad challenge, “which cannot be overestimated,” he says. Other professors describe pathways to better technologies, as well as the public policies and financial mechanisms necessary for the best applications to flourish. All agree that the goal is less reliance on carbon-based fuel sources, and that a combination of solutions – rather than a silver bullet – likely will create that greener energy future.

Produced in association with Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy

How do we get there? Steven Chu

Steven Chu , a Stanford professor of physics and of molecular & cellular physiology, discusses the enormous challenge of eliminating global greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century.

Go to the web site to view the video.

Capturing carbon: Sally Benson

Sally Benson , a Stanford professor of energy resources engineering, explains the essential role of capturing carbon and storing it underground in curbing climate change.

Clean alternatives to gasoline: Thomas Jaramillo

Thomas Jaramillo , a Stanford associate professor of chemical engineering, explains how researchers are developing clean alternatives to gasoline and other fossil fuels.

Innovations in electricity: Arun Majumdar

Arun Majumdar , a Stanford professor of mechanical engineering, explains how advances in big data and technology will lead to a modern, low-carbon electric grid.

Natural gas as a transition: Mark Zoback

Mark Zoback , a Stanford professor of geophysics, discusses the impact of the natural gas revolution as electricity providers transition from coal to a renewable-energy future.

Improved batteries and solar cells: Yi Cui

Yi Cui , a Stanford professor of materials science and engineering, discusses the big technical challenges in battery and solar research, and some possible solutions from his research.

Financing the transition: Dan Reicher

Dan Reicher , a Stanford professor of the practice of law, discusses the role of policy and finance in spurring development of clean-energy technologies.

Controlling chemistry to make new fuels: Stacey Bent

Stacey Bent , a Stanford professor of chemical engineering, explains strategies underway in her lab for making ethanol from molecules in the air.

How artificial intelligence will affect the future of energy and climate

Subscribe to planet policy, david g. victor david g. victor nonresident senior fellow - foreign policy , global economy and development , energy security and climate initiative.

January 10, 2019

• 21 min read

This report is part of “ A Blueprint for the Future of AI ,” a series from the Brookings Institution that analyzes the new challenges and potential policy solutions introduced by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

In a 2017 article for Foreign Affairs, Kassia Yanosek and I advanced the hypothesis that the biggest impacts of the information technology (IT) revolution may be felt far outside IT—in the traditional industries of oil, gas, and electricity. 1 That’s because IT was transforming how those industries function. That logic of transformation may be especially profound when looking at a subset of the IT revolution: artificial intelligence (AI).

Other essays in this series explain what’s happening with AI and why it is such an important technical revolution. 2 In this essay, I’ll look at how AI might be affecting the supply and demand for energy and the implications of AI for how modern society uses energy: climate change. In a nutshell, the message is that AI helps make markets more efficient and easier for analysts and market participants to understand highly complex phenomena—from the behavior of electrical power grids to climate change.

But AI itself won’t assure that outcome without clear policy incentives. Ironically, extremely smart energy markets lubricated by AI may make it easier to design good policy incentives while also making it easier for consumers to make choices about which energy services and products to buy that avoid the need to cut emissions. Even a big effort to control emissions will leave a lot of climate change—meaning that, in the future, much of “climate policy” will be focused on adapting to climate impacts and implementing quick responses in case of climate emergencies. 3 Extremely intelligent systems for adapting to climate change impacts may make the cost of that adaptation more transparent and thus politically difficult to muster.

AI helps make markets more efficient and easier for analysts and market participants to understand highly complex phenomena—from the behavior of electrical power grids to climate change.

The impacts of AI are numerous, but four clusters of impacts seem most likely to affect energy and climate—two will alter the supply and demand for energy, and two will affect the ability of societies to understand how emissions are affecting the climate and how to manage those impacts.

AI impacts on energy supply

Most visible in the energy and climate space is the impact of AI on how energy is supplied. That’s because more intelligent energy supply systems, in effect, shift outward the supply curves. They take resources that are hard to tap and lower the cost. For example, machine learning systems can improve the ability to map and understand the size and value of underground deposits of oil and gas—in turn, making it easier to tap those resources at lower cost.

The same logic applies not just to traditional hydrocarbons that make up the backbone of the world’s energy system but also new non-hydrocarbon energy supply options. For example, AI-assisted training for the design and operation of wind and solar farms can make these systems much more efficient in how they take financial resources (i.e., capital) and generate electricity. In the case of wind farms, the turbine heads can be oriented actively to capture a greater fraction of the incoming wind—something that has been doable for a long time and can be made more efficient with machine learning. Similar learning can improve the quality of solar forecasting—for example, leading to better day-ahead and hour-ahead predictions of how clouds and other weather formations affect solar output. In turn, better forecasts can make it easier and more lucrative for solar generators to participate in electricity markets.

An interesting question is whether there is a “bias” in how AI-related technologies are affecting energy supply, such as whether they making traditional hydrocarbon suppliers more productive faster than they make zero-carbon renewables more productive? This is a hard question to answer because it requires disentangling the effects of many other technological changes (e.g., improved drill bits, control systems for horizontal drilling, better materials for wind turbine blades, and less costly solar cells) from the specific effects of AI. At the moment, my sense is that AI is having a bigger impact in oil and gas than in renewables because the kinds of activities that are unlocking new hydrocarbon resources—notably the shale revolution in oil and gas which requires mapping complex underground reservoirs and tailoring drilling methods 4 —are particularly well-suited to the recursive, complex learning processes that AI is well-suited to deliver.

AI impacts on energy demand and markets

While it isn’t clear whether AI will favor higher or lower carbon supplies of energy, the impacts of AI on energy demand are easier to pin down. All else being equal, systems that have large amounts of intelligence—and the capacity to update quickly in light of real-world conditions—are probably systems that are a lot more efficient. Efficiency will lower demand for energy and lower emissions. The effects are likely larger than one percent—already, simple “nudge” interventions in power markets, for example reminding customers about the need to reduce energy consumption during peak periods and changing the default settings on thermostats—yield energy savings up to a few percentage points. A hyper-smart AI-driven energy system should deliver even bigger reductions, in part because the changes needed (e.g., aligning energy consumption with real-time changes in energy markets) can be automated. That said, the savings are unlikely to be as large as the 60 to 100 percent reduction in emissions that scientists say will be needed in order to stop global warming.

While it isn’t clear whether AI will favor higher or lower carbon supplies of energy, the impacts of AI on energy demand are easier to pin down.

One of the great promises of adding AI to energy markets lies with linking what customers want (e.g., light and heat) with the exact range of options and market conditions for supplying those energy services. Machine learning is ideally suited for making fine-grained determinations of what customers want and then adjusting energy purchasing decisions accordingly. In theory, they could make a number of services that are already offered in today’s markets more powerful, such as:

• Purchasing green energy credits . Today, customers typically either “go green” or don’t. What they pay for green is a decision made rarely (often just at the time when a customer signs up). AI systems could better embed information about what customers are willing to pay for green energy and also offer different shades of green. Today, the green debate focuses on renewable power almost exclusively. In the future it could include other offers—for example, output from new nuclear reactors that are emission free.
• Adjusting power purchasing decisions . As power grids shift to play a much larger role for variable renewable generators, the price of power will become more variable, creating a greater social value from real-time adjustments in power purchasing. In California, for example, power prices may reliably become negative mid-day (when solar output is highest) and then spike as the sun sets but demand for air conditioning and lighting rises in the late afternoon. This is one reason why the default tariff for electricity starting in 2019 will be “time of use.” AI can allow even small consumers to automatically adjust their power consumption in real time with prevailing prices—something that ordinary people won’t do unless they like sitting at home staring at real-time data from power markets. (Some people do that; most prefer to live their lives.)
• Making electric supplies more reliable and bespoke to consumer needs . AI schemes could integrate data from hazards (e.g., extreme storms and fires) and then adjust grid operations accordingly—making the grid safer, more efficient, and more reliable. Already, a few utilities have installed self-healing grid systems—that is, automated surveillance and switching equipment that can identify faults on a grid, isolate them and restore power automatically. Conventionally, when the utility detects a fault—often because an irate customer calls, complaining of lost power—the response is to send a bucket truck with two guys who drive the lines, finding the trouble and then manually closing switches once the problem is fixed. Similarly, many customers now demand levels of reliability higher than what the grid can offer—and they purchase costly power conditioning, generation, and storage technologies. AI can help make purchase and operation of those systems much more efficient.

At present, the potential for these AI uses is barely tapped. A few utilities are experimenting with systems, some large customers are actively managing energy systems with AI-based systems (because they can afford to amortize the cost over large savings), and some firms like Stem are emerging as intermediaries—making explicit AI offers to customers and providing the expertise needed so that even small customers can utilize these systems.

How AI will improve climate modeling

Most human-caused changes in climate are rooted in how we use energy—in particular fossil fuels that, when combusted, intrinsically generate carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). Thus, the changes discussed above—some leading to higher emissions, others to greater efficiency and lower carbon intensity—will affect the rate at which emissions flow into the atmosphere and accumulate. If the central message from the above discussion is that AI makes it possible for energy markets to reflect real-world conditions—and to be more efficient in matching consumer preferences with supplies—then there is no reason to believe that these more efficient markets, on their own, will tackle the carbon problem. Instead, they will require overt policy signals. For years, it has been thought that people often don’t respond readily to price signals, which is one reason why many analysts (and an even larger fraction of politicians) like direct regulation as a means of inducing reductions in emissions. Better and more efficient markets that can help consumers become more responsive to real-world conditions could help tamp down that enthusiasm for regulation and make practical a greater reliance on market-based instruments—such as carbon taxes. 5

There is no reason to believe that these more efficient markets, on their own, will tackle the carbon problem. Instead, they will require overt policy signals.

AI could help radically improve the assessment of climate change. Today’s climate impact assessments rely on global-scale models of the climate system that are then downscaled to regional and local assessments. The downscaling process is complex and imperfect, in part because lots of local factors affect how broad changes in the climate are manifest where people actually live—along coastlines, near wildfire zones, in cities struggling with heat stress, and the like. AI makes it possible to connect the imperfect downscaling process with real information about actual impacts—reflected in insurance claims, weather extremes, the arrival of migrants, observed outbreaks, the spread of disease, and such. Already, the community of scientists that perform climate-impact studies are making use of such diverse data sources. 6 AI could help automate and enrich that process, making real-time adjustments in climate-impact assessments feasible.

While these frontier opportunities are new, the idea of using machine feedbacks to improve model quality is hardly new in meteorology and climate modeling. For roughly two decades, there has been a systematic effort to compare climate models in terms of performance—that is, skill at forecasting temperature, precipitation, ice cover, and such. Those comparisons have probably made the models better and have also made the community much more aware of which models work best for different conditions. They have also made it easier for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other bodies that conduct climate-science assessments to determine where the climate modeling community agrees and disagrees.

How AI will improve climate policy

Since the chief protagonist in the climate change story, CO 2 , has a long atmospheric lifetime, there is only a sluggish relationship between changes in emissions and the accumulated concentrations; in turn, those concentrations have a sluggish impact on the climate. Even if AI were part of some massive transformation in the energy system, the built-in inertia of that energy system, along with the inertia in the climate system, virtually guarantees that the world is in for a lot of climate change. All this is grim news and means that widely discussed goals, such as stopping warming at 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius are unlikely to be realized.

These geophysical and infrastructural realities give rise to a new policy reality: adaptation is urgent. 7 They also mean that emergency responses to extreme climate impacts—for example, solar geoengineering, might be needed as well.

Extreme climate change is going to be ugly and will require hard choices—such as which coastlines to protect or abandon. Without smart adaptation strategies, it will be a lot worse.

Existing research shows that there is a huge difference in the impact on public welfare from scenarios where climate change affects a society that doesn’t have an adaptation plan compared with a society that takes active adaptive measures. For example, the most recent U.S. climate-impact assessment released in November 2018 demonstrates that active adaptation measures can radically reduce losses from some climate impacts—often with benefits that far exceed the costs. 8 Extreme climate change is going to be ugly and will require hard choices—such as which coastlines to protect or abandon. Without smart adaptation strategies, it will be a lot worse.

One of the central insights from the science of climate impacts is that extreme events will cause most of the damage. A world that is a bit warmer and wetter (and a bit drier in some places) is a world that societies, within reason, can probably adapt to—especially if those gradual changes are easy to anticipate. But a world that has more extreme events—put differently, climate events that have a higher variance—is a world that requires a lot more preparedness. A farming area that faces a new, significant risk of truly extreme drought for example, such as a decade-long dust bowl, will need to prepare as if that extreme event is commonplace. It will need irrigation systems, the option of planting hardier crops and other possible interventions that sit ready when the extreme events come.

Once those systems are purchased, much of the expense is borne and it makes sense to use them all the time. This has been the experience, for example, with the Thames river barrier or a similar Dutch flood barrier—these systems were designed and installed at vast expense with extreme events in mind, and now they are being used much more frequently. Climate impacts are, fundamentally, stochastic events centered around shifting medians—a warmer world, for example, is one where median temperature rises and where the whole distribution of temperatures from cold to hot shifts hotter. But the tails in that statistical distribution also probably fatten, and for some impacts, those tails get a lot fatter. Machine learning techniques will probably improve the ability to understand the shapes of those tails.

This logic of extreme events as the main drivers of climate impacts and response strategies has some big implications for how societies will plan for adaptation and how AI can help—possibly in transformative ways.

First, AI can help focus and adjust adaptation strategies. Because uncertainty is high and extreme events are paramount, policymakers, firms, and households will not know where to act nor what expense is merited. They will have a large portfolio of responses, each with an option value. Machine learning can help improve the capacity to assess those option values more rapidly. Such techniques might also make it possible to rely more heavily on market forces to weigh which options generate private and public welfare—if so, AI could help reduce one of the greatest dangers as societies develop adaptation strategies, which is that they commit vast resources to adaptation without guiding resources to their greatest value. High levels of uncertainty, along with acute private incentives that can mis-allocate resources—for example, local construction firms and organized labor might favor some kinds of adaptive responses (e.g., building sea walls and other hardened infrastructure) even when other less costly options are available—mean that adaptation needs could generate a massive call on resources and thus a massive opportunity for mischief and mis-allocation.

Second, most adaptation efforts are intrinsically local and regional affairs. As a matter of geophysics, climate change harms public welfare when general perturbations in the oceans and atmosphere get translated into specific climatological events that are manifest in specific places—specific coastlines, mountainous regions, public lands, and natural ecosystems. As a matter of public policy, the actors whose responses have the biggest leverage on local impacts are managers of local infrastructures—coastal and urban planners, developers, city managers, and the like. Politically, this is one of the reasons why, despite all the difficulties in mobilizing action to control emissions, it is likely that as communities realize what’s at stake with adaptation, they will respond. Local responses generate, for the most part, local benefits. A big challenge in all this local response, however, is that local authorities are intrinsically decentralized and usually not steeped in technical expertise. Getting the best information on climate impacts and response strategies—let alone keeping that information aligned with local circumstances and shifting odds for climate impacts—is all but impossible. AI could help lower that cost and, in effect, democratize quality climate impacts response.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the single strongest result from studies assessing climate impacts is that poor communities will be hit harder than the rich. That’s because responding to climate impacts is often costly and because the kinds of factors that help explain wealth—good government and low levels of corruption—also explain which societies are most likely to adopt smart adaptation measures. The poor are on the front lines of climate change and, for the most part, will suffer the most as reflected in relative loss of welfare and loss of life and opportunity. To the extent that AI democratizes and improves the quality of understanding and responding to climate impacts, it may differentially help the societies that otherwise would be least able to respond. From a climate perspective, then, the AI revolution could end up being a vitally important part of assuring and promoting economic development amongst the world’s least well off—a topic that another paper in this series explores. 9

Final thoughts

To close, I will make two points. First, AI has the potential to make energy markets a lot more powerful—by unlocking new supplies, reducing transaction costs, and making it easier for users to specify what they want to buy in the market. Efficient markets are great, but they also mean that market failures can become more rampant. Climate change is perhaps the largest market failure the world has seen so far—emissions of warming gases have global external consequences and the failure to impose emission taxes or other incentives means that firms and individuals are causing higher emissions and greater externalities than warranted. AI can transform markets, but the markets won’t transform emissions without clear signals. Mustering the political ability to put those signals into place and coordinate across countries remains as much a problem today as it was 30 years ago—and AI has had essentially no impact on that.

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Second, as the world grapples with climate impacts and adaptation, it will probably discover that the line between “adaptation policy” and “good development” gets blurry. Some of the most important adaptation policies are also among the most important development policies. For example, one way to cut the impacts of climate change on agriculture is to adopt early warning crop forecasting systems—so that farmers can adjust seeds, cropping methods, and planting times (among other variables) to reduce harmful impacts from the vagaries of weather. Those same systems make sense even without a changing climate. AI could help make these kinds of development-oriented activities and policies more efficient economically, and politically, administratively easier to adopt, and more democratic in their orientation. 10 Insofar as that happens, AI will further blur the line between adaptation and development.

• David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek, “The Next Energy Revolution: The Promise and Peril of High-Tech Innovation,” Foreign Affairs , July/August 2017, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-06-13/next-energy-revolution
• See Darrell M. West, “What is Artificial Intelligence?” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, October, 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-is-artificial-intelligence/ , and Chris Meserole, “What is Machine Learning?” ?,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, October, 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/what-is-machine-learning/
• Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, and David G. Victor, “Global warming will happen faster than we think.” Nature , December 5, 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5
• James A. Baker III, George P. Shultz, Henry M. Paulson Jr., Martin Feldstein, Ted Halstead, Thomas Stephenson, N. Gregory Mankiw, Rob Walton, “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends. Climate Leadership Council,” February 2017, https://www.clcouncil.org/media/2017/03/The-Conservative-Case-for-Carbon-Dividends.pdf
• Solomon Hsiang, Robert Kopp, Amir Jina, James Rising, Michael Delgado, Shashank Mohan, D.J. Rasmussen, Robert Muir-Wood, Paul Wilson, Michael Oppenheimer, Kate Larsen, and Trevor Houser, “Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States,” Science , June 30, 2017, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362
• Dzaugis, M.P., D.R. Reidmiller, C.W. Avery, A. Crimmins, L. Dahlman, D.R. Easterling, R. Gaal, E. Greenhalgh, D. Herring, K.E. Kunkel, R. Lindsey, T.K. Maycock, R. Molar, B.C. Stewart, and R.S. Vose, 2018: Frequently Asked Questions. In Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II [Reidmiller, D.R., C.W. Avery, D.R. Easterling, K.E. Kunkel, K.L.M. Lewis, T.K. Maycock, and B.C. Stewart (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 1444–1515. https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
• Jennifer L. Cohen and Homi Kharas, “Using big data and artificial intelligence to accelerate global development,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, November 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/using-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence-to-accelerate-global-development/
• See Elaine Kamarck, “Malevolent soft power, AI, and the threat to democracy,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, November 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/malevolent-soft-power-ai-and-the-threat-to-democracy/ and Jennifer L. Cohen and Homi Kharas, “Using big data and artificial intelligence to accelerate global development?,” (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, November 2018), https://www.brookings.edu/research/using-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence-to-accelerate-global-development/

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A new energy economy is emerging

• Executive summary
• Key themes of WEO 2021
• Introduction
• Scenario trajectories and temperature outcomes
• Keeping the door to 1.5 °C open
• Energy consumers of tomorrow
• Mobilising investment and finance
• People centred transitions
• Phasing out coal
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There are unmistakeable signs of change. In 2020, even as economies sank under the weight of Covid-19 lockdowns, additions of renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar PV increased at their fastest rate in two decades, and electric vehicle sales set new records. A new energy economy is coming into view, ushered forward by policy action, technology innovation and the increasing urgency of the need to tackle climate change. There is no guarantee that the emergence of this new energy economy will be smooth, and it is not coming forward quickly enough to avoid severe impacts from a changing climate. But it is already clear that tomorrow’s energy economy promises to be quite different from the one we have today.

Electricity is taking on an ever-more central role in the lives of consumers and, for an increasing number of households, it promises to become the energy source on which they rely for all their everyday needs: mobility, cooking, lighting, heating and cooling. The reliability and affordability of electricity is set to become even more critical to all aspects of people’s lives and well-being.

Electricity’s share of the world’s final consumption of energy has risen steadily over recent decades, and now stands at 20%. Its rise accelerates in future years as the pace of transitions picks up. In the NZE, electricity accounts for around 50% of final energy use by 2050 (around 30% in the APS). Given that electricity delivers useful energy services with better efficiency than other fuels, the contribution of electricity is even higher than these numbers would suggest.

The rise of electricity requires a parallel increase in its share of energy-related investment. Since 2016, global investment in the power sector has consistently been higher than in oil and gas supply. The faster that clean energy transitions proceed, the wider this gap becomes, and as a result electricity becomes the central arena for energy-related financial transactions. In the NZE, investment in power generation and infrastructure is six-times higher than in oil and gas supply by 2030.

Clean technologies in the power sector and across a range of end-uses have become the first choice for consumers around the world, initially due to policy support but over time because they are simply the most cost-effective. In most regions, solar PV or wind already represents the cheapest available source of new electricity generation. Based on total costs of ownership, the case for electric cars in many markets is already a compelling one.

In the new energy economy, the huge market opportunity for clean technology becomes a major new area for investment and international competition; countries and companies jostle for position in global supply chains. We estimate that, if the world gets on track for net zero emissions by 2050, then the annual market opportunity for manufacturers of wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells grows tenfold to USD 1.2 trillion by 2050, around 3.5-times larger than in the STEPS. These five elements alone would be larger than today’s oil industry and its associated revenues. 

The new energy economy involves varied and often complex interactions between electricity, fuels and storage markets, creating fresh challenges for regulation and market design. A major question is how to manage the potential for increased variability on both the demand and supply sides of the energy equation. The variability of electricity supply will be affected by rising shares of wind and solar PV, putting a huge premium on robust grids and other sources of supply flexibility. The variability of demand will be shaped by increasing deployment of heat pumps and air conditioners (the latter especially in developing economies, where current ownership levels are low), and could be exacerbated by poorly sequenced recharging of EV fleets or by cold snaps, heat waves or other extreme weather events. Without effective policies to prepare for and manage these fluctuations, the daily variation of demand could increase on the basis of announced pledges to 270 gigawatts (GW) in the European Union (from 120 GW today) and over 170 GW in India (from 40 GW) by mid-century.

Digital technologies play crucial roles in integrating different aspects of the new energy system. Sectors that have hitherto operated largely independently (such as electricity and transport) become connected in new ways with the rise of electric mobility, and grids need to cope with a much greater diversity and complexity of flows as many new players, including households, enter the arena as producers. Managing the platforms and data required to keep this system operating effectively becomes a central part of the new energy economy, as does mitigating associated cybersecurity and data privacy risks.

Clean electrification is the dominant theme in the early phases of the transformation of the global energy economy together with the quest for improvements in efficiency. Over time, however, continued rapid deployment in these areas needs to be accompanied by clean energy innovation and the widespread use of technologies that are not yet readily available on the market. These technologies are vital to decarbonise areas such as heavy industry and long-distance transport that are not readily susceptible to electrification for one reason or another, and they include advanced batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, advanced biofuels, and new technologies for the capture and use of CO 2 , including direct air capture. Building these additional pillars of the new energy economy requires early and sustained investment in energy R&D and an accelerated programme of demonstration projects.

These changes redirect global flows of trade and capital . The combined share of hydrogen and critical minerals (such as lithium, cobalt, copper and rare earths elements) in global energy-related trade rises to one-quarter of the total in the APS, and takes a dominant share in the NZE as the value of fossil fuels trade declines significantly. This completely upends the present dynamics of international energy-related trade, and it is accompanied by a major shift in energy-related financial flows: the decline in the value of trade in fossil fuels causes the dollar-denominated revenues accruing to producer economies from oil and gas exports to decline significantly over time.

The new energy economy depicted in the NZE is a collaborative one in which countries demonstrate a shared focus on securing the necessary reductions in emissions, while minimising and taking precautions against new energy security risks. However, the APS highlights the possibility of new divisions and fragmentation as countries proceed at different speeds through energy transitions. By the 2030s, for example, the APS sees the production of “green” steel in economies that have pledged to reach net zero alongside the continuing use of traditional emissions-intensive methods elsewhere, deepening tensions around trade in energy-intensive goods. There could be a gulf too in international investment and finance: increasingly stringent disciplines applicable to financial flows may mean that capital from the “net zero” world does not flow very freely to countries undergoing slower transitions. Successful, orderly and broad-based transitions in which countries enjoy the benefits of global trade will depend on finding ways to lessen and manage the potential tensions in the international system that are highlighted in the APS.

Sizing the market opportunity for clean energy

Achieving net zero emissions requires an unparalleled increase in clean energy investment. In the NZE, annual investment in clean energy rises to USD 4 trillion by 2030, more than tripling from current levels. Mobilising such a large investment will be challenging, but the investment required to secure clean energy transitions offers an unprecedented level of market opportunities to equipment manufacturers, service providers, developers and engineering, procurement and construction companies along the entire clean energy supply chain.

In the NZE, the combined size of the market for wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells represents a cumulative market opportunity to 2050 worth USD 27 trillion. At over 60% of the total, batteries account for the lion’s share of the estimated market for clean energy technology equipment in 2050. With over 3 billion electric vehicles (EVs) on the road and 3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of battery storage deployed in the NZE in 2050, batteries play a central part in the new energy economy. They also become the single largest source of demand for various critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.

Estimated market sizes for selected clean energy technologies by technology and region, 2020-2050

Advanced economies and China have been building up their research and development (R&D) programmes and increasing spending on clean energy innovation, but patterns of spending will change as deployment expands everywhere in the world. In the NZE, the Asia Pacific region is home to 45% of the estimated market for clean energy technologies by 2050, and the share of the market accounted for by North America and Europe is lower than it was earlier in the period.

Many countries are seeking to develop manufacturing expertise and capabilities that would allow them to use some locally produced products to meet domestic demand, and also to participate in global supply chains and to license related intellectual property. Energy start-up companies have an important part to play in this. Despite the pandemic, record-breaking levels of capital have flowed to clean energy technology start-ups, with investment in 2021 expected to surpass the USD 4 billion in early-stage equity raised in 2019, which was the previous peak year. The United States still accounts for around half of the capital being invested, but Europe was the only major region to increase investment in 2020 and China’s share of the market has risen from 5% in the 2010-14 period to over 35% in the last three years.

Governments everywhere are also actively seeking to attract additional talent. India and Singapore have launched government initiatives to support international clean energy entrepreneurs. China, Japan and United States have recently made high-level commitments to energy R&D and innovation, framing it as a critical area of technological competition in coming years. In Europe, public initiatives like the European Battery Alliance are actively seeking to create new value chains. There is a momentous opportunity for the best innovators to capture a share of emerging value chains that have huge future potential.

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The Future of Energy Storage

Read the report

Executive summary (PDF) Full report (PDF)

Press release

Energy storage important to creating affordable, reliable, deeply-decarbonized electricity systems

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Why is energy storage so important?

MITEI’s three-year Future of Energy Storage study explored the role that energy storage can play in fighting climate change and in the global adoption of clean energy grids. Replacing fossil fuel-based power generation with power generation from wind and solar resources is a key strategy for decarbonizing electricity. Storage enables electricity systems to remain in balance despite variations in wind and solar availability, allowing for cost-effective deep decarbonization while maintaining reliability.

The Future of Energy Storage report is an essential analysis of this key component in decarbonizing our energy infrastructure and combating climate change. The report includes six key conclusions:

Storage enables deep decarbonization of electricity systems

Energy storage is a potential substitute for, or complement to, almost every aspect of a power system, including generation, transmission, and demand flexibility. Storage should be co-optimized with clean generation, transmission systems, and strategies to reward consumers for making their electricity use more flexible.

Recognize tradeoffs between “zero” and “net-zero” emissions

Goals that aim for zero emissions are more complex and expensive than net-zero goals that use negative emissions technologies to achieve a reduction of 100%. The pursuit of a zero, rather than net-zero, goal for the electricity system could result in high electricity costs that make it harder to achieve economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.

Developing economy countries are an important market for electricity system storage

Storage can reduce the cost of electricity for developing country economies while providing local and global environmental benefits. Lower storage costs increase both electricity cost savings and environmental benefits.

Invest in analytical resources and regulatory agency staff

The need to co-optimize storage with other elements of the electricity system, coupled with uncertain climate change impacts on demand and supply, necessitate advances in analytical tools to reliably and efficiently plan, operate, and regulate power systems of the future. Important areas include system stability and dispatch, resource adequacy, and retail rate design. Increased investment regulatory agency staff who will face new challenges is also warranted.

Long-duration storage needs federal support

Lithium-ion batteries are being widely deployed in vehicles, consumer electronics, and more recently, in electricity storage systems. These batteries have, and will likely continue to have, relatively high costs per kWh of electricity stored, making them unsuitable for long-duration storage that may be needed to support reliable decarbonized grids. The U.S. federal government should prioritize support for long-duration storage technologies even if they may not be developed and deployed until after 2030.

Reward consumers for more flexible electricity use

The intermittency of wind and solar generation and the goal of decarbonizing other sectors through electrification increase the benefit of adopting pricing and load management options that reward all consumers for shifting electricity uses with some flexibility away from periods when the balance between supply and demand is tight to periods of abundance. Advanced metering and behind the meter communications technologies make it feasible for state regulators to implement such strategies for residential and small commercial consumers.

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Reused power plants could be part of the green energy future, MIT report finds

"The report focuses on a persistent problem facing renewable energy: how to store it. Storing fossil fuels like coal or oil until it's time to use them isn't a problem, but storage systems for solar and wind energy are still being developed that would let them be used long after the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing," says Asher Klein for NBC10 Boston on MITEI's "Future of Energy Storage" report.

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What the Future of Renewable Energy Looks Like

Renewable energy capacity is set to expand 50% between 2019 and 2024, led by solar energy. This is according to the International Energy Agency ’s (IEA) ‘Renewable 2020’ report , which found that solar, wind and hydropower projects are rolling out at their fastest rate in four years, making for the argument that the future lies in using renewable energy. 

The Future of Renewable Energy: Growth Projections

Renewable energy resources make up 26% of the world’s electricity today, but according to the IEA its share is expected to reach 30% by 2024. The resurgence follows a global slowdown in 2019, due to falling technology costs and rising environmental concerns.

Renewable energy in the future is predicted that by 2024, solar capacity in the world will grow by 600 gigawatts (GW), almost double the installed total electricity capacity of Japan. Overall, renewable electricity is predicted to grow by 1 200 GW by 2024, the equivalent of the total electricity capacity of the US. 

The IEA is an autonomous inter-governmental organisation that was initially created after the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. It now acts as an energy policy advisor to 29 member countries and the European Commission to shape energy policies for a secure and sustainable future.

1. Solar Will Become 35% Cheaper By 2024

When the sun shines onto a solar panel, energy from the sunlight is absorbed by the PV cells in the panel. This energy creates electrical charges that move in response to an internal electrical field in the cell, causing electricity to flow.

Industry experts predict that the US will double its solar installations to four million by 2023. In 2018, the UK had over one million solar panel installations, up by 2% from the previous year and Australia reached two million solar installations in the same year. A big reason for this increased uptake is the fall in prices to install the panels.

The cost of solar PV-based power declined by 13% in 2018 , while Carbon Tracker predicts that 72% of coal-based power will become globally unprofitable by 2040. The IEA report found that solar energy will account for 60% of the predicted renewable growth , primarily due to its accessibility. Compared with the previous six-year period, expansion of solar energy has more than doubled. The cost of solar power is expected to decline by 15% to 35% by 2024, spurring further growth over the second half of the decade.

Future Capacity of Solar Energy

Wind and hydropower often require users to live in specific locations, but solar offers more freedom; the sun rises and sets on a predictable schedule, and it’s not as variable as running water or wind. Residential solar power is expected to expand from 58 GW in 2018 to 142 GW by 2024, and annual capacity additions are expected to more than triple to over 20 GW by 2024. China is expected to register the largest installed residential solar capacity in the world by 2024, with the strongest per capita growth in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria.

Solar facilities will continue reducing their variability rates by storing electricity during the day and running at night. However, advanced solar plants will operate on higher DC to AC ratios , meaning they’ll deliver more consistent service for longer durations.

Commercial and residential buildings will keep running at full capacity even in periods of low sunlight. Closing the gaps between sunlight collection and electricity generation will spur residents and corporations to join the solar movement. Therefore, it’s imperative for governments to implement incentive and remuneration schemes, as well as effective regulation policies. For example, California has mandated that after 2020, solar panels must be installed on new homes and buildings of up to three storeys.

Commercial and industrial solar energy capacity is forecast to constitute 377 GW in 2024, up from 150 GW in 2018, with China predicted to be the largest growth market. This market remains the largest growth segment because solar power is usually more inexpensive and has a relatively stable load profile during the day, which generally enables larger savings on electricity bills.

You might also like: Top 5 Fastest-Growing Renewable Energy Sources Around the World

2. Onshore Wind Energy Capacity Will Increase 57% By 2024

To generate electricity using wind, wind turns the propeller-like blades of a turbine around a rotor, which spins a generator, which creates electricity.

The adoption of wind power is becoming more prominent due to increased capacity.

Onshore wind capacity is expected to expand by 57% to 850 GW by 2024. Annual onshore wind additions will be led by the US and China, owing to a development rush and a policy transition to competitive auctions respectively. Expansion will accelerate in the EU as competitive auctions continue to keep costs relatively low . These auctions will mean that growth in Latin America, the MENA region, Eurasia and sub-Saharan Africa will remain stable over the forecast period. 

Offshore wind capacity is forecast to increase almost threefold to 65 GW by 2024, representing almost 10% of total world wind generation. While the EU accounts for half of global offshore wind capacity expansion over the forecast period, on a country basis, China leads deployment, with 12.5 GW in development. The first large US capacity additions are also expected during the forecast period. 

Japan Expands Wind Energy

Japan is experimenting with the idea of installing offshore turbines to replace many of their nuclear reactors, a result of the country’s 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The company Marubeni recently signed a project agreement to build offshore farms in northern Japan, with each farm able to produce 140 MW of power.

Japanese lawmakers have created regulations to give developers more certainty in constructing sources of wind-based electricity; legislation outlining competitive bidding processes has been passed to ensure that building costs are reduced and developers consider potential capacity issues. The country’s Port and Harbour Law has also been revised to spur wind turbine construction in port-associated areas and other locations favourable to wind turbines. 

Grid integration, financing and social acceptance remain the key challenges to faster wind expansion globally. 

3. Hydroelectric Capacity Will Rise 9% By 2024

Hydropower plants capture the energy of falling water to generate electricity. A turbine converts the kinetic energy of falling water into mechanical energy. Then a generator converts the mechanical energy from the turbine into electrical energy.

According to the IEA, hydropower will remain the world’s primary source of renewable power in 2024. Capacity is set to increase 9% (121 GW) over the forecast period, led by China, India and Brazil. 25% of global growth is expected to come from just three megaprojects: two in China (the 16 GW Wudongde and 10 GW Baihetan projects) and one in Ethiopia (the 6.2 GW Grand Renaissance project ).

However, there has been a slowdown in the two largest markets, China and Brazil; growth is challenged by rising investment costs due to limited remaining economical sites and extra expenditures in addressing social and environmental impacts.

Nevertheless, annual additions are expected to expand in sub-Saharan Africa and in the ASEAN region as untapped potential is used to meet rising power demand. 

4. Geothermal Capacity Will Increase 28% By 2024

To generate geothermal energy, hot water is pumped from deep underground through a well under high pressure. When the water reaches the surface, the pressure is dropped, which causes the water to turn into steam. The steam spins a turbine, which is connected to a generator that produces electricity. The steam cools off in a cooling tower and condenses back to water. The cooled water is pumped back into the Earth to begin the process again.

The US market for geothermal heat pumps will exceed $2 billion by 2024 as demand for efficient heating solutions increases. Transformed building codes will encourage a move to renewable heating and electricity systems in commercial and residential real estates. 

Geothermal capacity is anticipated to grow 28%, reaching 18 GW by 2024, with Asia responsible for one-third of global expansion, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines, followed by Kenya, whose geothermal capacity is set to overtake Iceland’s during the forecast period. 

The same research from Global Market Insights predicts the commercial market will experience the most considerable uptick; according to the Department of Energy, geothermal solutions will generate 8.5% of all electricity in the US by 2050. 

You might also like: Renewables on Track to Become Largest Source of Global Electricity by 2025, IEA Says

The Future Lies in Using Renewable Energy

Renewable energy will continue to rise in the upcoming decade, edging out fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

“This is a pivotal time for renewable energy,” said the IEA’s executive director, Fatih Birol. “Technologies such as solar and wind are at the heart of transformations taking place across the global energy system. Their increasing deployment is crucial for efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, reduce air pollution, and expand energy access.”

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Energy markets have been on a roller-coaster ride this year. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries imposed financial sanctions on Russia and embargoed its oil exports. Russia cut its gas supplies to Europe in retaliation. Major importers such as Germany had to slash their energy use and look elsewhere for supplies. Low- and middle-income nations struggled to access affordable energy. Countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka faced blackouts; fuel price hikes spilled over into food markets.

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A Slower Burn: At a Louisiana coal depot, electrician Randal Brown holds a bright idea: a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). Much of the world's electricity is produced in coal-fired generators that belch carbon dioxide, mercury, and sulfur into the atmosphere. A CFL lasts longer and consumes far less power than a conventional bulb, cutting energy costs, reducing greenhouse emissions, and saving nearly a quarter ton of coal over its lifetime.

Future Power: Where Will the World Get Its Next Energy Fix?

Here's what you need to know about the warming planet, how it's affecting us, and what's at stake.

FREEDOM! I stand in a cluttered room surrounded by the debris of electrical enthusiasm: wire peelings, snippets of copper, yellow connectors, insulated pliers. For me these are the tools of freedom. I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work. A meter shows that 1,285 watts of power are blasting straight from the sun into my system, charging my batteries, cooling my refrigerator, humming through my computer, liberating my life.

The euphoria of energy freedom is addictive. Don't get me wrong; I love fossil fuels. I live on an island that happens to have no utilities, but otherwise my wife and I have a normal American life. We don't want propane refrigerators, kerosene lamps, or composting toilets. We want a lot of electrical outlets and a cappuccino maker. But when I turn on those panels, wow!

Maybe that's because for me, as for most Americans, one energy crisis or another has shadowed most of the past three decades. From the OPEC crunch of the 1970s to the skyrocketing cost of oil and gasoline today, the world's concern over energy has haunted presidential speeches, congressional campaigns, disaster books, and my own sense of well-being with the same kind of gnawing unease that characterized the Cold War.

As National Geographic reported in June 2004, oil, no longer cheap, may soon decline. Instability where most oil is found, from the Persian Gulf to Nigeria to Venezuela, makes this lifeline fragile. Natural gas can be hard to transport and is prone to shortages. We won't run out of coal anytime soon, or the largely untapped deposits of tar sands and oil shale. But it's clear that the carbon dioxide spewed by coal and other fossil fuels is warming the planet, as this magazine reported last September.

Cutting loose from that worry is enticing. With my new panels, nothing stands between me and limitless energy—no foreign nation, no power company, no carbon-emission guilt. I'm free!

Well, almost. Here comes a cloud.

Shade steals across my panels and over my heart. The meter shows only 120 watts. I'm going to have to start the generator and burn some more gasoline. This isn't going to be easy after all.

The trouble with energy freedom is that it's addictive; when you get a little, you want a lot. In microcosm I'm like people in government, industry, and private life all over the world, who have tasted a bit of this curious and compelling kind of liberty and are determined to find more.

Some experts think this pursuit is even more important than the war on terrorism. "Terrorism doesn't threaten the viability of the heart of our high-technology lifestyle," says Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. "But energy really does."

Energy conservation can stave off the day of reckoning, but in the end you can't conserve what you don't have. So Hoffert and others have no doubt: It's time to step up the search for the next great fuel for the hungry engine of humankind.

Is there such a fuel? The short answer is no. Experts say it like a mantra: "There is no silver bullet." Though a few true believers claim that only vast conspiracies or lack of funds stand between us and endless energy from the vacuum of space or the core of the Earth, the truth is that there's no single great new fuel waiting in the heart of an equation or at the end of a drill bit.

Enthusiasm about hydrogen-fueled cars may give the wrong impression. Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It's found along with oxygen in plain old water, but it isn't there for the taking. Hydrogen has to be freed before it is useful, and that costs more energy than the hydrogen gives back. These days, this energy comes mostly from fossil fuels. No silver bullet there.

The long answer about our next fuel is not so grim, however. In fact, plenty of contenders for the energy crown now held by fossil fuels are already at hand: wind, solar, even nuclear, to name a few. But the successor will have to be a congress, not a king. Virtually every energy expert I met did something unexpected: He pushed not just his own specialty but everyone else's too.

"We're going to need everything we can get from biomass, everything we can get from solar, everything we can get from wind," says Michael Pacheco, director of the National Bioenergy Center, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. "And still the question is, can we get enough?"

The big problem is big numbers. The world uses some 320 billion kilowatt-hours of energy a day. It's equal to about 22 bulbs burning nonstop for every person on the planet. No wonder the sparkle is seen from space. Hoffert's team estimates that within the next century humanity could use three times that much. Fossil fuels have met the growing demand because they pack millions of years of the sun's energy into a compact form, but we will not find their like again.

Fired up by my taste of energy freedom, I went looking for technologies that can address those numbers. "If you have a big problem, you must give a big answer," says a genial energy guru named Hermann Scheer, a member of the German parliament. "Otherwise people don't believe."

The answers are out there. But they all require one more thing of us humans who huddle around the fossil fuel fire: We're going to have to make a big leap—toward a different kind of world.

Solar: Free Energy, at a Price

On a cloudy day near the city of Leipzig in the former East Germany, I walked across a field of fresh grass, past a pond where wild swans fed. The field was also sown with 33,500 photovoltaic panels, planted in rows like silver flowers all turned sunward, undulating gently across the contours of the land. It's one of the largest solar arrays ever. When the sun emerges, the field produces up to five megawatts of power, and it averages enough for 1,800 homes.

Nearby are gaping pits where coal was mined for generations to feed power plants and factories. The skies used to be brown with smoke and acrid with sulfur. Now the mines are being turned into lakes, and power that once came from coal is made in a furnace 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away.

Solar electric systems catch energy directly from the sun—no fire, no emissions. Some labs and companies are trying out the grown-up version of a child's magnifying glass: giant mirrored bowls or troughs to concentrate the sun's rays, producing heat that can drive a generator. But for now, sun power mostly means solar cells.

The idea is simple: Sunlight falling on a layer of semiconductor jostles electrons, creating a current. Yet the cost of the cells, once astronomical, is still high. My modest system cost over $15,000 (U.S.), about $10 a watt of capacity, including batteries to store power for when the sun doesn't shine.

Like most things electronic, solar power has been getting cheaper. "Thirty years ago it was cost effective on satellites," says Daniel Shugar, president of PowerLight Corporation, a fast-growing California company that has built solar installations for clients including Toyota and Target. "Today it can be cost-effective for powering houses and businesses," at least where utility power is expensive or unavailable. Tomorrow, he says, it will make sense for almost everyone.

Martin Roscheisen, CEO of a company called Nanosolar, sees that future in a set of red-topped vials, filled with tiny particles of semiconductor. "I put some of that on my finger, and it disappeared right into my skin," he says. He won't say exactly what the particles are, but the "nano" in the company name is a hint: They are less than a hundred nanometers across—about the size of a virus, and so small they slip right through skin.

Roscheisen believes those particles promise a low-cost way to create solar cells. Instead of making the cells from slabs of silicon, his company will paint the particles onto a foil-like material, where they will self-assemble to create a semiconductor surface. The result: a flexible solar-cell material 50 times thinner than today's solar panels. Roscheisen hopes to sell it in sheets, for about 50 cents a watt.

"Fifty cents a watt is kind of the holy grail," says David Pearce, president and CEO of Miasolé, one of many other companies working on "thin-film" solar cells. At that price solar could compete with utilities and might take off. If prices continued to drop, solar cells might change the whole idea of energy by making it cheap and easy for individuals to gather for themselves. That's what techies call a "disruptive technology."

"Automobiles were disruptive to the horse and buggy business," Dan Shugar says. "PCs were disruptive to the typewriter industry. We believe solar electric systems will be disruptive to the energy industry."

Yet price isn't the only hurdle solar faces. There are the small matters of clouds and darkness, which call for better ways of storing energy than the bulky lead-acid batteries in my system. But even if those hurdles are overcome, can solar really make the big energy we need?

With solar now providing less than one percent of the world's energy, that would take "a massive (but not insurmountable) scale-up," NYU's Hoffert and his colleagues said in an article in Science . At present levels of efficiency, it would take about 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) of solar panels—an area bigger than Vermont—to satisfy all of the United States' electricity needs. But the land requirement sounds more daunting than it is: Open country wouldn't have to be covered. All those panels could fit on less than a quarter of the roof and pavement space in cities and suburbs.

Wind: Feast or Famine

Wind, ultimately driven by sun-warmed air, is just another way of collecting solar energy, but it works on cloudy days. One afternoon I stood in a field near Denmark's west coast under a sky so dark and heavy it would have put my own solar panels into a coma. But right above me clean power was being cranked out by the megawatt. A blade longer than an airplane wing turned slowly in a strong south breeze. It was a wind turbine.

The turbine's lazy sweep was misleading. Each time one of the three 130-foot (40-meter) blades swung past, it hissed as it sliced the air. Tip speed can be well over 100 miles (161 kilometers) an hour. This single tower was capable of producing two megawatts, almost half the entire output of the Leipzig solar farm.

In Denmark, turning blades are always on the horizon, in small or large groups, like spokes of wheels rolling toward a strange new world. Denmark's total installed wind power is now more than 3,000 megawatts—about 20 percent of the nation's electrical needs. All over Europe generous incentives designed to reduce carbon emissions and wean economies from oil and coal have led to a wind boom. The continent leads the world in wind power, with almost 35,000 megawatts, equivalent to 35 large coal-fired power plants. North America, even though it has huge potential for wind energy, remains a distant second, with just over 7,000 megawatts. With the exception of hydroelectric power—which has been driving machines for centuries but has little room to grow in developed countries—wind is currently the biggest success story in renewable energy.

"When I started in 1987, I spent a lot of time sitting in farmers' houses until midnight talking to the neighbors, just selling one turbine," says Hans Buus. He's director of project development for a Danish energy company called Elsam. "I would not have been able to imagine the level it is today."

He means not only the number of turbines but also their sheer size. In Germany I saw a fiberglass-and-steel prototype that stands 600 feet (183 meters) tall, has blades 200 feet (61 meters) long, and can generate five megawatts. It's not just a monument to engineering but also an effort to overcome some new obstacles to wind power development.

One is aesthetic. England's Lake District is a spectacular landscape of bracken-clad hills and secluded valleys, mostly protected as a national park. But on a ridge just outside the park, though not outside the magnificence, 27 towers are planned, each as big as the two-megawatt machine in Denmark. Many locals are protesting. "This is a high-quality landscape," says one. "They shouldn't be putting those things in here."

Danes seem to like turbines more than the British, perhaps because many Danish turbines belong to cooperatives of local residents. It's harder to say "not in my backyard" if the thing in your backyard helps pay for your house. But environmental opposition is not the only trouble facing wind development. Across Europe many of the windiest sites are already occupied. So the five-megawatt German machine is designed to help take wind power away from the scenery and out to abundant new sites at sea.

Many coastlines have broad areas of shallow continental shelf where the wind blows more steadily than on land and where, as one wind expert puts it, "the seagulls don't vote." (Real voters, however, sometimes still object to the sight of towers on the horizon.) It costs more to build and maintain turbines offshore than on land, but an underwater foundation for a five-megawatt tower is cheaper per megawatt than a smaller foundation. Hence the German giant.

There are other challenges. Like sailboats, wind turbines can be calmed for days. To keep the grid humming, other sources, such as coal-fired power plants, have to stand ready to take up the slack. But when a strong wind dumps power into the grid, the other generators have to be turned down, and plants that burn fuel are not quickly adjustable. A wind-power bonanza can become a glut. Denmark, for example, is sometimes forced to unload power at uneconomic rates to neighbors like Norway and Germany.

What's needed for wind as well as solar is a way to store a large energy surplus. Technology already exists to turn it into fuels such as hydrogen or ethanol or harness it to compress air or spin flywheels, banking energy that can later churn out electricity. But most systems are still decades from becoming economically feasible.

On the plus side, both wind and solar can provide what's called distributed energy: They can make power on a small scale near the user. You can't have a private coal plant, but you can have your own windmill, with batteries for calm days. The more houses or communities make their own wind power, the smaller and cheaper central power plants and transmission lines can be.

In Europe's big push toward wind power, the turbines keep growing. But in Flagstaff, Arizona, Southwest Windpower makes turbines with blades you can pick up in one hand. The company has sold about 60,000 of the little turbines, most of them for off-grid homes, sailboats, and remote sites like lighthouses and weather stations. At 400 watts apiece they can't power more than a few lights.

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But David Galley, Southwest's president, whose father built his first wind turbine out of washing machine parts, is testing a new product he calls an energy appliance. It will stand on a tower as tall as a telephone pole, produce up to two kilowatts in a moderate wind, and come with all the electronics needed to plug it into the house.

Many U.S. utilities are required to pay for power that individuals put back into the grid, so anyone in a relatively breezy place could pop up the energy appliance in the yard, use the power when it's needed, and feed it back into the grid when it's not. Except for the heavy loads of heating and air-conditioning, this setup could reduce a home's annual power bill to near zero. If, as Galley hopes, he can ultimately sell the energy appliance for under $3,000, it would pay for itself with energy savings within a few years.

Somewhere in this mix of the grand and the personal, there may be big numbers in wind too.

Biomass: Farming Your Fuel

In Germany, driving from the giant wind turbine near Hamburg to Berlin, I regularly got an odd whiff: the sort-of-appetizing scent of fast food. It was a puzzle until a tanker truck passed, emblazoned with the word "biodiesel." The scent was of burning vegetable oil. Germany uses about 450 million gallons (1.7 billion liters) of biodiesel a year, about 3 percent of its total diesel consumption.

Biomass energy has ancient roots. The logs in your fire are biomass. But today biomass means ethanol, biogas, and biodiesel—fuels as easy to burn as oil or gas, but made from plants. These technologies are proven. Ethanol produced from corn goes into gasoline blends in the U.S.; ethanol from sugarcane provides 50 percent of automobile fuel in Brazil. In the U.S. and other nations, biodiesel from vegetable oil is burned, pure or mixed with regular diesel, in unmodified engines. "Biofuels are the easiest fuels to slot into the existing fuel system," says Michael Pacheco, the National Bioenergy Center director.

What limits biomass is land. Photosynthesis, the process that captures the sun's energy in plants, is far less efficient per square foot than solar panels, so catching energy in plants gobbles up even more land. Estimates suggest that powering all the world's vehicles with biofuels would mean doubling the amount of land devoted to farming.

At the National Bioenergy Center, scientists are trying to make fuel-farming more efficient. Today's biomass fuels are based on plant starches, oils, and sugars, but the center is testing organisms that can digest woody cellulose, abundant in plants, so that it too could yield liquid fuel. More productive fuel crops could help as well.

One is switchgrass, a plant native to North America's prairies that grows faster and needs less fertilizer than corn, the source of most ethanol fuel made in the U.S. It also thrives on land unfit for other crops and does double duty as a source of animal food, further reducing the pressure on farmland.

"Preliminary results look promising," says Thomas Foust, the center's technology manager. "If you increase automobile efficiency to the level of a hybrid and go with the switchgrass crop mix, you could meet two-thirds of the U.S. transportation fuel demand with no additional land."

But technically possible doesn't mean politically feasible. From corn to sugarcane, all crops have their own lobbyists. "We're looking down a lot of alleys," says Pacheco. "And every alley has its own vested interest group. Frankly, one of the biggest challenges with biomass is that there are so many options."

Nuclear: Still a Contender

Nuclear fission appeared to lead the race as an energy alternative decades ago, as countries began building reactors. Worldwide, about 440 plants now generate 16 percent of the planet's electric power, and some countries have gone heavily nuclear. France, for instance, gets 78 percent of its electricity from fission.

The allure is clear: abundant power, no carbon dioxide emissions, no blots on the landscape except an occasional containment dome and cooling tower. But along with its familiar woes—the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chornobyl, poor economics compared with fossil fuel plants, and the challenge of radioactive waste disposal—nuclear power is far from renewable. The readily available uranium fuel won't last much more than 50 years.

Yet enthusiasm is reviving. China, facing a shortage of electric power, has started to build new reactors at a brisk pace—one or two a year. In the U.S., where some hydrogen-car boosters see nuclear plants as a good source of energy for making hydrogen from water, Vice President Dick Cheney has called for "a fresh look" at nuclear. And Japan, which lacks its own oil, gas, and coal, continues to encourage a fission program. Yumi Akimoto, a Japanese elder statesman of nuclear chemistry, saw the flash of the bomb at Hiroshima as a boy yet describes nuclear fission as "the pillar of the next century."

In the town of Rokkasho at the northernmost tip of Honshu Island, Japan is working to get around the limits of the uranium supply. Inside a new 20-billion-U.S.-dollar complex, workers wear pale blue work suits and an air of patient haste. I looked in on cylindrical centrifuges for enriching uranium and a pool partly filled with rods of spent nuclear fuel, cooling. Spent fuel is rich in plutonium and leftover uranium—valuable nuclear material that the plant is designed to salvage. It will "reprocess" the spent fuel into a mixture of enriched uranium and plutonium called MOX, for mixed oxide fuel. MOX can be burned in some modern reactors and could stretch the fuel supply for decades or more.

Reprocessing plants in other countries also turn spent fuel into MOX. But those plants originally made plutonium for nuclear weapons, so the Japanese like to say that theirs, due to start up in 2007, is the first such plant built entirely for peaceful use. To assure the world that it will stay that way, the Rokkasho complex includes a building for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, who will make certain that none of the plutonium is diverted for weapons.

That doesn't satisfy nuclear energy opponents. Opposition has mounted in Japan after fatal accidents at the country's nuclear plants, including one that killed two workers and exposed others to radiation. Shortly after my visit to Rokkasho, about a hundred protesters marched outside the plant in a blizzard.

A bigger controversy would greet what some nuclear proponents think is a crucial next step: a move to breeder reactors. Breeders can make more fuel than they consume, in the form of plutonium that can be extracted by reprocessing the spent fuel. But experimental breeder reactors have proved to be temperamental, and a full-scale breeder program could be an arms-control nightmare because of all the plutonium it would put in circulation.

Akimoto, for one, believes that society has to get comfortable with fuel reprocessing if it wants to count on nuclear energy. He spoke to me through an interpreter, but to emphasize this point he jumped into English: "If we are going to accept nuclear power, we have to accept the total system. Sometimes we want to get the first crop of fruit but forget how to grow the trees."

Fusion: The Fire Some Time

Fusion is the gaudiest of hopes, the fire of the stars in the human hearth. Produced when two atoms fuse into one, fusion energy could satisfy huge chunks of future demand. The fuel would last millennia. Fusion would produce no long-lived radioactive waste and nothing for terrorists or governments to turn into weapons. It also requires some of the most complex machinery on Earth.

A few scientists have claimed that cold fusion, which promises energy from a simple jar instead of a high-tech crucible, might work. The verdict so far: No such luck. Hot fusion is more likely to succeed, but it will be a decades-long quest costing billions of dollars.

Hot fusion is tough because the fuel—a kind of hydrogen—has to be heated to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius) or so before the atoms start fusing. At those temperatures the hydrogen forms a roiling, unruly vapor of electrically charged particles, called plasma. "Plasma is the most common state of matter in the universe," says one physicist, "but it's also the most chaotic and the least easily controlled." Creating and containing plasma is so challenging that no fusion experiment has yet returned more than 65 percent of the energy it took to start the reaction.

Now scientists in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are refining the process, learning better ways to control plasma and trying to push up the energy output. They hope that a six-billion-U.S.-dollar test reactor called ITER will get the fusion bonfire blazing—what physicists call "igniting the plasma." The next step would be a demonstration plant to actually generate power, followed by commercial plants in 50 years or so.

"I am 100 percent sure we can ignite the plasma," says Jerome Pamela, the project manager of a fusion machine called the Joint European Torus, or JET, at Britain's Culham Science Center. "The biggest challenge is the transition between the plasma and the outside world." He means finding the right materials for the lining of the ITER plasma chamber, where they will have to withstand a bombardment of neutrons and transfer heat to electric generators.

At Culham I saw an experiment in a tokamak, a device that cages plasma in a magnetic field shaped like a doughnut—the standard design for most fusion efforts, including ITER. The physicists sent a huge electrical charge into the gas-filled container, a scaled-down version of JET. It raised the temperature to about ten million degrees Celsius, not enough to start fusion but enough to create plasma.

The experiment lasted a quarter of a second. A video camera shooting 2,250 frames a second captured it. As it played back, a faint glow blossomed in the chamber, wavered, grew into a haze visible only on its cooling edges, and vanished.

It was—well, disappointing. I had expected the plasma to look like a movie shot of an exploding automobile. This was more like a ghost in an English paneled library.

But this phantom was energy incarnate: the universal but elusive magic that all our varied technologies—solar, wind, biomass, fission, fusion, and many others large or small, mainstream or crazy—seek to wrestle into our service.

Taming that ghost is not just a scientific challenge. The ITER project has been held up by a seemingly simple problem. Since 2003 the participating countries—including much of the developed world—have been deadlocked over where to build the machine. The choice has come down to two sites, one in France and one in Japan.

As all energy experts will tell you, this proves a well-established theory. There's only one force tougher to manage than plasma: politics.

Although some politicians believe the task of developing the new energy technologies should be left to market forces, many experts disagree. That's not just because it's expensive to get new technology started, but also because government can often take risks that private enterprise won't.

"Most of the modern technology that has been driving the U.S. economy did not come spontaneously from market forces," NYU's Martin Hoffert says, ticking off jet planes, satellite communications, integrated circuits, computers. "The Internet was supported for 20 years by the military and for 10 more years by the National Science Foundation before Wall Street found it."

Without a big push from government, he says, we may be condemned to rely on increasingly dirty fossil fuels as cleaner ones like oil and gas run out, with dire consequences for the climate. "If we don't have a proactive energy policy," he says, "we'll just wind up using coal, then shale, then tar sands, and it will be a continually diminishing return, and eventually our civilization will collapse. But it doesn't have to end that way. We have a choice."

It's a matter of self-interest, says Hermann Scheer, the German member of parliament. "I don't appeal to the people to change their conscience," he said in his Berlin office, where a small model of a wind turbine turned lazily in a window. "You can't go around like a priest." Instead, his message is that nurturing new forms of energy is necessary for an environmentally and economically sound future. "There is no alternative."

Already, change is rising from the grass roots. In the U.S., state and local governments are pushing alternative energies by offering subsidies and requiring that utility companies include renewable sources in their plans. And in Europe financial incentives for both wind and solar energy have broad support even though they raise electric bills.

Alternative energy is also catching on in parts of the developing world where it's a necessity, not a choice. Solar power, for example, is making inroads in African communities lacking power lines and generators. "If you want to overcome poverty, what do people need to focus on?" asks Germany's environment minister, Jiirgen Trittin. "They need fresh water and they need energy. For filling the needs of remote villages, renewable energy is highly competitive."

In developed countries there's a sense that alternative energy—once seen as a quaint hippie enthusiasm—is no longer alternative culture. It's edging into the mainstream. The excitement of energy freedom seems contagious.

One afternoon last year, near a village north of Munich, a small group of townspeople and workers inaugurated a solar facility. It would soon surpass the Leipzig field as the largest in the world, with six megawatts of power.

About 15 people gathered on a little manmade hill beside the solar farm and planted four cherry trees on the summit. The mayor of the tidy nearby town brought out souvenir bottles of schnapps. Almost everyone had a swig, including the mayor.

Then he said he would sing to the project's construction supervisor and a landscape artist, both American women. The two women stood together, grinning, with the field of solar panels soaking up energy behind them. The German mayor straightened his dark suit, and the other men leaned on their shovels.

Fifty years ago, I thought, there were still bombed-out ruins in the cities of Europe. The Soviet Union was planning Sputnik. Texas oil was $2.82 U.S. a barrel. At the most, we have 50 years to make the world over again. But people change, adapt, and make crazy new stuff work. I thought about Dan Shugar talking about disruptive technologies. "There's a sense of excitement," he had said. "There's a sense of urgency. There's a sense that we cannot fail."

On the hilltop, the mayor took a deep breath. He sang, in a booming tenor, without missing a note or a word, the entire song "O Sole Mio." Everyone cheered.

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Renewable energy – powering a safer future

Energy is at the heart of the climate challenge – and key to the solution.

A large chunk of the greenhouse gases that blanket the Earth and trap the sun’s heat are generated through energy production, by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and heat.

Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, are by far the largest contributor to global climate change , accounting for over 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.

The science is clear: to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, emissions need to be reduced by almost half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050.

To achieve this, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable.

Renewable energy sources – which are available in abundance all around us, provided by the sun, wind, water, waste, and heat from the Earth – are replenished by nature and emit little to no greenhouse gases or pollutants into the air.

Fossil fuels still account for more than 80 percent of global energy production , but cleaner sources of energy are gaining ground. About 29 percent of electricity currently comes from renewable sources.

Here are five reasons why accelerating the transition to clean energy is the pathway to a healthy, livable planet today and for generations to come.

1. Renewable energy sources are all around us

About 80 percent of the global population lives in countries that are net-importers of fossil fuels -- that’s about 6 billion people who are dependent on fossil fuels from other countries, which makes them vulnerable to geopolitical shocks and crises.

In contrast, renewable energy sources are available in all countries, and their potential is yet to be fully harnessed. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that 90 percent of the world’s electricity can and should come from renewable energy by 2050.

Renewables offer a way out of import dependency, allowing countries to diversify their economies and protect them from the unpredictable price swings of fossil fuels, while driving inclusive economic growth, new jobs, and poverty alleviation.

2. Renewable energy is cheaper

Renewable energy actually is the cheapest power option in most parts of the world today. Prices for renewable energy technologies are dropping rapidly. The cost of electricity from solar power fell by 85 percent between 2010 and 2020. Costs of onshore and offshore wind energy fell by 56 percent and 48 percent respectively.

Falling prices make renewable energy more attractive all around – including to low- and middle-income countries, where most of the additional demand for new electricity will come from. With falling costs, there is a real opportunity for much of the new power supply over the coming years to be provided by low-carbon sources.

Cheap electricity from renewable sources could provide 65 percent of the world’s total electricity supply by 2030. It could decarbonize 90 percent of the power sector by 2050, massively cutting carbon emissions and helping to mitigate climate change.

Although solar and wind power costs are expected to remain higher in 2022 and 2023 then pre-pandemic levels due to general elevated commodity and freight prices, their competitiveness actually improves due to much sharper increases in gas and coal prices, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

3. Renewable energy is healthier

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 99 percent of people in the world breathe air that exceeds air quality limits and threatens their health, and more than 13 million deaths around the world each year are due to avoidable environmental causes, including air pollution.

The unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide originate mainly from the burning of fossil fuels. In 2018, air pollution from fossil fuels caused $2.9 trillion in health and economic costs , about $8 billion a day.

Switching to clean sources of energy, such as wind and solar, thus helps address not only climate change but also air pollution and health.

4. Renewable energy creates jobs

Every dollar of investment in renewables creates three times more jobs than in the fossil fuel industry. The IEA estimates that the transition towards net-zero emissions will lead to an overall increase in energy sector jobs : while about 5 million jobs in fossil fuel production could be lost by 2030, an estimated 14 million new jobs would be created in clean energy, resulting in a net gain of 9 million jobs.

In addition, energy-related industries would require a further 16 million workers, for instance to take on new roles in manufacturing of electric vehicles and hyper-efficient appliances or in innovative technologies such as hydrogen. This means that a total of more than 30 million jobs could be created in clean energy, efficiency, and low-emissions technologies by 2030.

Ensuring a just transition , placing the needs and rights of people at the heart of the energy transition, will be paramount to make sure no one is left behind.

5. Renewable energy makes economic sense

About $7 trillion was spent on subsidizing the fossil fuel industry in 2022, including through explicit subsidies, tax breaks, and health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels.

In comparison, about $4.5 trillion a year needs to be invested in renewable energy until 2030 – including investments in technology and infrastructure – to allow us to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The upfront cost can be daunting for many countries with limited resources, and many will need financial and technical support to make the transition. But investments in renewable energy will pay off. The reduction of pollution and climate impacts alone could save the world up to $4.2 trillion per year by 2030.

Moreover, efficient, reliable renewable technologies can create a system less prone to market shocks and improve resilience and energy security by diversifying power supply options.

Learn more about how many communities and countries are realizing the economic, societal, and environmental benefits of renewable energy.

Will developing countries benefit from the renewables boom? Learn more here .

What is renewable energy?

Derived from natural resources that are abundant and continuously replenished, renewable energy is key to a safer, cleaner, and sustainable world. Explore common sources of renewable energy here.

Why invest in renewable energy?

Learn more about the differences between fossil fuels and renewables, the benefits of renewable energy, and how we can act now.

Five ways to jump-start the renewable energy transition now

UN Secretary-General outlines five critical actions the world needs to prioritize now to speed up the global shift to renewable energy.

What is net zero? Why is it important? Our net-zero page explains why we need steep emissions cuts now and what efforts are underway.

• What is climate change?

Our climate 101 offers a quick take on the how and why of climate change. Read more.

How will the world foot the bill? We explain the issues and the value of financing climate action.

Climate issues

Learn more about how climate change impacts are felt across different sectors and ecosystems.

It’s time to stop burning our planet, and start investing in the abundant renewable energy all around us." ANTÓNIO GUTERRES , United Nations Secretary-General

Facts and figures

• Causes and effects
• Myth busters

Cutting emissions

• Explaining net zero
• High-level expert group on net zero
• Checklists for credibility of net-zero pledges
• Greenwashing
• What you can do

Clean energy

• Renewable energy – key to a safer future
• What is renewable energy
• Five ways to speed up the energy transition
• Why invest in renewable energy
• Clean energy stories
• A just transition

Adapting to climate change

• Climate adaptation
• Early warnings for all
• Youth voices

Financing climate action

• Finance and justice
• Loss and damage
• $100 billion commitment
• Why finance climate action
• Biodiversity
• Human Security

International cooperation

• What are Nationally Determined Contributions
• Acceleration Agenda
• Climate Ambition Summit
• Climate conferences (COPs)
• Youth Advisory Group
• Action initiatives
• Secretary-General’s speeches
• Press material
• Fact sheets
• Communications tips

This Is the Future: Essay on Renewable Energy

Today the world population depends on nonrenewable energy resources. With the constantly growing demand for energy, natural gas, coal, and oil get used up and cannot replenish themselves. 

Aside from limited supply, heavy reliance on fossil fuels causes planetary-scale damage. Sea levels are rising. Heat-trapping carbon dioxide increased the warming effect by 45% from 1990 to 2019. The only way to tackle the crisis is to start the transition to renewable energy now. 

What is renewable energy? It is energy that comes from replenishable natural resources like sunlight, wind, thermal energy, moving water, and organic materials. Renewable resources do not run out. They are cost-efficient and renew faster than they are consumed. How does renewable energy save money? It creates new jobs, supports economic growth, and decreases inequitable fossil fuel subsidies. 

At the current rates of production, some fossil fuels will not even last another century. This is why the future depends on reliable and eco-friendly resources. This renewable energy essay examines the types and benefits of renewable energy and its role in creating a sustainable future.

Top 5 Types of Renewable Energy: The Apollo Alliance Rankings

There are many natural resources that can provide people with clean energy. To make a list of the five most booming types of renewable energy on the market today, this energy essay uses data gathered by the Apollo Alliance. It is a project that aims to revolutionize the energy sector of the US with a focus on clean energy. 

The Apollo Alliance unites businesses, community leaders, and environmental experts to support the transition to more sustainable and efficient living. Their expert opinion helped to compile information about the most common and cost-competitive sources of renewable energy. However, if you want to get some more in-depth research, you can entrust it to an essay writer . Here’s a quick overview of renewable energy resources that have a huge potential to substitute fossil fuels. 

Solar Renewable Energy

The most abundant and practically endless resource is solar energy. It can be turned into electricity by photovoltaic systems that convert radiant energy captured from sunlight. Solar farms could generate enough energy for thousands of homes.

An endless supply is the main benefit of solar energy. The rate at which the Earth receives it is 10,000 times greater than people can consume it, as a paper writer points out based on their analysis of research findings. It can substitute fossil fuels and deliver people electricity, hot water, cooling, heat, etc. 

The upfront investment in solar systems is rather expensive. This is one of the primary limitations that prevent businesses and households from switching to this energy source at once. However, the conclusion of solar energy is still favorable. In the long run, it can significantly decrease energy costs. Besides, solar panels are gradually becoming more affordable to manufacture and adopt, even at an individual level. 

Wind Renewable Energy

Another clean energy source is wind. Wind farms use the kinetic energy of wind flow to convert it into electricity. The Appolo Alliance notes that, unlike solar farms, they can’t be placed in any location. To stay cost-competitive, wind farms should operate in windy areas. Although not all countries have the right conditions to use them on a large scale, wind farms might be introduced for some energy diversity. The technical potential for it is still tremendous. 

Wind energy is clean and safe for the environment. It does not pollute the atmosphere with any harmful products compared to nonrenewable energy resources. 

The investment in wind energy is also economically wise. If you examine the cost of this energy resource in an essay on renewable resources, you’ll see that wind farms can deliver electricity at a price lower than nonrenewable resources. Besides, since wind isn’t limited, its cost won’t be influenced by the imbalance of supply and demand.

Geothermal Renewable Energy

Natural renewable resources are all around us, even beneath the ground. Geothermal energy can be produced from the thermal energy from the Earth’s interior. Sometimes heat reaches the surface naturally, for example, in the form of geysers. But it can also be used by geothermal power plants. The Earth’s heat gets captured and converted to steam that turns a turbine. As a result, we get geothermal energy.

This source provides a significant energy supply while having low emissions and no significant footprint on land. A factsheet and essay on renewable resources state that geothermal plants will increase electricity production from 17 billion kWh in 2020 to 49.8 billion kWh in 2050.

However, this method is not without limitations. While writing a renewable resources essay, consider that geothermal energy can be accessed only in certain regions. Geological hotspots are off-limits as they are vulnerable to earthquakes. Yet, the quantity of geothermal resources is likely to grow as technology advances. 

Ocean Renewable Energy

The kinetic and thermal energy of the ocean is a robust resource. Ocean power systems rely on:

• Changes in sea level;
• Wave energy;
• Water surface temperatures;
• The energy released from seawater and freshwater mixing.

Ocean energy is more predictable compared to other resources. As estimated by EPRI, it has the potential to produce 2640 TWh/yr. However, an important point to consider in a renewable energy essay is that the kinetic energy of the ocean varies. Yet, since it is ruled by the moon’s gravity, the resource is plentiful and continues to be attractive for the energy industry. 

Wave energy systems are still developing. The Apollo energy corporation explores many prototypes. It is looking for the most reliable and robust solution that can function in the harsh ocean environment. 

Another limitation of ocean renewable energy is that it may cause disruptions to marine life. Although its emissions are minimal, the system requires large equipment to be installed in the ocean. 

Biomass Renewable Energy

Organic materials like wood and charcoal have been used for heating and lighting for centuries. There are a lot more types of biomass: from trees, cereal straws, and grass to processed waste. All of them can produce bioenergy. 

Biomass can be converted into energy through burning or using methane produced during the natural process of decomposition. In an essay on renewable sources of energy, the opponents of the method point out that biomass energy is associated with carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, the amount of released greenhouse gases is much lower compared to nonrenewable energy use. 

While biomass is a reliable source of energy, it is only suitable for limited applications. If used too extensively, it might lead to disruptions in biodiversity, a negative impact on land use, and deforestation. Still, Apollo energy includes biomass resources that become waste and decompose quickly anyway. These are organic materials like sawdust, chips from sawmills, stems, nut shells, etc. 

What Is the Apollo Alliance?

The Apollo Alliance is a coalition of business leaders, environmental organizations, labor unions, and foundations. They all unite their efforts in a single project to harness clean energy in new, innovative ways. 

Why Apollo? Similarly to President John F. Kennedy’s Apollo Project, Apollo energy is a strong visionary initiative. It is a dare, a challenge. The alliance calls for the integrity of science, research, technology, and the public to revolutionize the energy industry.

The project has a profound message. Apollo energy solutions are not only about the environment or energy. They are about building a new economy. The alliance gives hope to building a secure future for Americans. 

What is the mission of the Apollo Alliance? 

• Achieve energy independence with efficient and limitless resources of renewable energy.
• Pioneer innovation in the energy sector.
• Build education campaigns and communication to inspire new perceptions of energy. 
• Create new jobs.
• Reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. 
• Build healthier and happier communities. 

The transformation of the industry will lead to planet-scale changes. The Apollo energy corporation can respond to the global environmental crisis and prevent climate change. 

Apollo renewable energy also has the potential to become a catalyst for social change. With more affordable energy and new jobs in the industry, people can bridge the inequality divide and build stronger communities. 

Why Renewable Energy Is Important for the Future

Renewable energy resources have an enormous potential to cover people’s energy needs on a global scale. Unlike fossil fuels, they are available in abundance and generate minimal to no emissions. 

The burning of fossil fuels caused a lot of environmental problems—from carbon dioxide emissions to ocean acidification. Research this issue in more detail with academic assistance from essay writer online . You can use it to write an essay on renewable sources of energy to explain the importance of change and its global impact. 

Despite all the damage people caused to the planet, there’s still hope to mitigate further repercussions. Every renewable energy essay adds to the existing body of knowledge we have today and advances research in the field. Here are the key advantages and disadvantages of alternative energy resources people should keep in mind. 

Advantage of Green Energy

The use of renewable energy resources has a number of benefits for the climate, human well-being, and economy:

• Renewable energy resources have little to no greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we take into account the manufacturing and recycling of the technologies involved, their impact on the environment is significantly lower compared to fossil fuels. 
• Renewable energy promotes self-sufficiency and reduces a country’s dependence on foreign fuel. According to a study, a 1% increase in the use of renewable energy increases economic growth by 0.21%. This gives socio-economic stability.
• Due to a lack of supply of fossil fuels and quick depletion of natural resources, prices for nonrenewable energy keep increasing. In contrast, green energy is limitless and can be produced locally. In the long run, this allows decreasing the cost of energy. 
• Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy doesn’t emit air pollutants. This positively influences health and quality of life. 
• The emergence of green energy plants creates new jobs. Thus, Apollo energy solutions support the growth of local communities. By 2030, the transition to renewable energy is expected to generate 10.3 million new jobs. 
• Renewable energy allows decentralization of the industry. Communities get their independent sources of energy that are more flexible in terms of distribution. 
• Renewable energy supports equality. It has the potential to make energy more affordable to low-income countries and expand access to energy even in remote and less fortunate neighborhoods. 

Disadvantages of Non-Conventional Energy Sources

No technology is perfect. Renewable energy resources have certain drawbacks too: 

• The production of renewable energy depends on weather conditions. For example, wind farms could be effective only in certain locations where the weather conditions allow it. The weather also makes it so that renewable energy cannot be generated around the clock. 
• The initial cost of renewable energy technology is expensive. Both manufacturing and installation require significant investment. This is another disadvantage of renewable resources. It makes them unaffordable to a lot of businesses and unavailable for widespread individual use. In addition, the return on investment might not be immediate.
• Renewable energy technology takes up a lot of space. It may affect life in the communities where these clean energy farms are installed. They may also cause disruptions to wildlife in the areas. 
• One more limitation a renewable resources essay should consider is the current state of technology. While the potential of renewable energy resources is tremendous, the technology is still in its development phase. Therefore, renewable energy might not substitute fossil fuels overnight. There’s a need for more research, investment, and time to transition to renewable energy completely. Yet, some diversity of energy resources should be introduced as soon as possible. 
• Renewable energy resources have limited emissions, but they are not entirely pollution-free. The manufacturing process of equipment is associated with greenhouse gas emissions while, for example, the lifespan of a wind turbine is only 20 years. 

For high school seniors eyeing a future rich with innovative endeavors in renewable energy or other fields, it's crucial to seek financial support early on. Explore the top 10 scholarships for high school seniors to find the right fit that can propel you into a future where you can contribute to the renewable energy movement and beyond. Through such financial support, the road to making meaningful contributions to a sustainable future becomes a tangible reality.

Renewable energy unlocks the potential for humanity to have clean energy that is available in abundance. It leads us to economic growth, independence, and stability. With green energy, we can also reduce the impact of human activity on the environment and stop climate change before it’s too late. 

So what’s the conclusion of renewable energy? Transitioning to renewable energy resources might be challenging and expensive. However, most experts agree that the advantages of green energy outweigh any drawbacks. Besides, since technology is continuously evolving, we’ll be able to overcome most limitations in no time.

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on the future of global energy

Daniel G. Nocera, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2005, is W. M. Keck Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry.

Energy is the greatest concern of our future. The rising living standards of a growing world population will increase global energy consumption dramatically over the next half century. The challenge for science, and particularly for the discipline of chemistry, is to meet this energy need in a secure, sustainable, and environmentally responsible way. This essay will frame the magnitude of the problem, show the insufficiency of conventional energy sources to meet these needs, and pose an alternative solution.

By 2002, the global population burned energy at a rate of 13.5 TW. (One TW equals 10 12 watts, or 10 12 joules per second. This unit is convenient because it normalizes energy use per unit of time.) In the next forty-five years, this burn rate will rise with alarming alacrity. To gain a sense of the scope of the problem, we can perform a simple but powerful analysis: we can multiply a country’s TW consumption per person by the projected global population of 9 billion people for the year 2050 (see table 1). For example, if 9 billion people adopt the current standard of living for a U.S. resident (which takes 1.1361 × 10 -8  TW of energy to sustain), the world will need an astronomical 102 TW of energy in 2050.

The next three entries–China, India, and Africa–are cause for concern. These countries–and, in one case, an entire continent–have very low per-capita energy use but possess the largest populations on our planet. Since energy consumption scales directly with a country’s GDP, global energy use will increase drastically as China, India, and Africa modernize. So how much energy will the world need in 2050? It depends. If everyone adopts Equatorial Guinea’s current living standards, we will need 30.4 TW by 2050. Or in the case of Samoa’s, we will need 35.7 TW. Both are well below what we will use if everyone in the world consumes energy at North America’s (84.1 TW) or Western Europe’s (45.4 TW) current rates. Conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28–35 TW in 2050.

Even with extreme conservation measures (maintaining a 102 TW standard of living with only 28–35 TW of energy available will require conservation measures that are far beyond the human experience), we will still need an additional 15–22 TW of energy over our current global base of 13.5 TW. If this sounds simple to achieve, then consider the total amounts of possible energy from the following sources (all figures come from the World Energy Assessment, http://www.undp.org/seed/eap/activities/wea/; a more comprehensive presentation of these numbers can be found on http://nsl.caltech.edu/energy.html):

• From biomass , 7–10 TW: This is the maximum amount of biomass energy available from the agricultural landmass of the planet, which excludes the area needed to house a population of 9 billion. Obtaining this quantity would require harvesting all crops exclusively for energy.
• From nuclear , 8 TW: Delivering this TW-value with nuclear energy would take the construction of eight thousand new nuclear-power plants. In other words, over the next forty-five years, we would have to construct one new nuclear-power plant every two days.
• From wind , 2.1 TW: We could only gather this amount of energy from wind by saturating all global landmass in class 3 and greater with windmills. (‘Class’ refers to an area’s wind-energy potential: a class-3 area has winds of 5.1 meters per second at 10 meters above the ground, the minimum necessary for sustainable energy generation.)
• From hydroelectric , 0.7–2.0 TW: We could achieve this supply of hydroelectric energy by placing dams in all remaining rivers on the earth.

These scenarios are meant to illustrate the scale of the energy problem that confronts our global community. They assume no new advances in science and technology, e.g., the design of new reactor cores or genetically engineered biomass. And in some cases, they are restrictive, e.g., most potential wind energy is over the ocean surface and not land. The point is that, even under the untenable circumstances outlined above, we can barely attain the necessary energy supply for 2050.

The message is clear. The additional energy we need by 2050, over the current 13.5 TW base, is simply not attainable from long-discussed sources–the global appetite for energy is simply too great. We could use more coal, oil, and gas. However, rising energy costs, energy security, and, perhaps most urgently, concerns for the environment, provide the drivers to take energy exploration from the oil fields to the laboratory bench. There, a carbon-neutral, renewable energy source must be discovered.

The principal environmental problem with the continued use of fossil fuels to supply the growing energy demand is the release of CO 2 into the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO 2 concentration during the last century has risen monotonically. Moreover, detailed analysis of the relative abundance of carbon isotopes confirms that this observed CO 2 increase is the result of burning fossil fuels. The current CO 2 concentration of 370 parts per million (ppm) is unparalleled in the last six hundred fifty thousand years, with CO 2 levels ranging from 210–300 ppm until now. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO 2 concentration will likely double, even triple, within the twenty-first century. While we cannot predict the consequences of this increase precisely, there is no question that we are perturbing the planet on an unprecedented scale. The effects of our actions on the earth are unarguably serious, but hopefully not catastrophic. It is thus imperative that the global community moves as quickly as possible to carbon-neutral energy sources.

Of the possible sustainable carbon-neutral energy sources, sunlight is preeminent. More solar energy strikes the Earth’s surface in one hour of each day than the energy used by all human activities in one year. If we could only mimic photosynthesis outside of the leaf–i.e., an artificial photosynthesis–then we could harness the sun’s energy as a fuel. Such a process would combine water and sunlight to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would then be combined with the oxygen in a fuel cell to give back water and energy. In the overall cycle, sunlight and water are converted to useful energy in the form of the fuels hydrogen and oxygen.

But there’s a catch. Using water and sunlight to make a clean, sustainable fuel to power the planet is a daunting endeavor, as we must uncover large expanses of fundamental molecular science in order to enable light-based energy-conversion schemes.

To emulate photosynthesis, we must be able to capture sunlight and relay it to catalysts that then act on water to rearrange its bonds and make the chemical fuel, hydrogen, and its by-product, oxygen. In designing these hydrogen- and oxygen-producing catalysts, we must take the following into consideration: The overall water-splitting reaction is a multielectron process, involving a total of four electrons. The development of a quantitative, predictive model describing single-electron reactions was a milestone achievement in chemistry in the last half-century. A similar understanding of multielectron reactions, however, has yet to be realized. Moreover, the transfer of four protons must accompany electron transfer–so we need to learn how to manage both electrons and protons. Finally, whereas chemists know how to catalytically rearrange energy-rich (i.e., reactive) bonds, we have yet to develop efficient bond-making/breaking reactions on energy-poor (i.e., stable) substrates such as water.

Scientists are currently working in each of those areas to advance the science of renewable energy at the molecular level. Some of the latest advances include discovering guidelines for the rational design of multielectron reactions and uncovering proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) as a field of study at a mechanistic level. With the frameworks of multielectron chemistry and PCET in place, catalysts that can produce hydrogen and oxygen have been created. Though these are not yet ready for practical use, this will come in time with molecular reengineering. In any case, the development of these catalysts and the studies of their reactivity are revealing the principles needed to simulate photosynthesis. The creation of solar-produced fuels is only part, albeit a significant one, of developing a reliable solar-based technology. A U.S. Department of Energy report on a Solar Energy Utilization workshop (http://www.sc.doe.gov/bes/reports/files/seu_rpt.pdf) identifies a number of other basic-science needs: new photovoltaics to capture solar energy efficiently and relay it to the catalysts; new materials for safe storage of hydrogen and other fuels; the activation of other small molecules of energy consequence such as CO 2 ; and an understanding of reactions of energy consequence at interfaces and at surfaces. Ultimately, the advancement of solar-energy technology depends on the implementation of basic-science discoveries, which require effective, responsible public-management and economic/social-science policies throughout the entire innovation cycle.

Clearly, the greatest crisis confronting us in the twenty-first century is the rapidly growing demand for energy. Because the chemical bond, and the manipulation of the energy within, lies at the heart of this endeavor, chemistry will likely play the most central role of all the sciences. What chemists do in the coming decades will determine whether or not we will bequeath to our planet the gift of the sun as its source of energy.

Essay on Renewable Energy

Introduction to Renewable Energy

In the quest for a sustainable and environmentally conscious future, adopting renewable energy has emerged as a pivotal solution to mitigate the challenges posed by traditional fossil fuels. Take, for instance, the remarkable growth of solar power in countries like Germany, where the “Energiewende” policy has catapulted them to the forefront of green energy innovation. This transformative journey showcases the potential of harnessing solar energy as an alternative and a cornerstone for economic prosperity, reduced carbon emissions, and heightened energy security. As we delve into the world of renewable energy, it becomes evident that these innovations are key to shaping a cleaner, more resilient global energy landscape.

Importance of Transitioning to Renewable Sources

A sustainable future and resolving numerous global issues depend heavily on the switch to renewable energy sources. This shift is crucial for several reasons:

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• Environmental Preservation: Fossil fuel combustion contributes significantly to air and water pollution and climate change. Transitioning to renewables reduces greenhouse gas emissions, mitigates environmental degradation, and helps preserve ecosystems.
• Climate Change Mitigation: Renewable energy is a key player in mitigating climate change . Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, is crucial to prevent catastrophic outcomes such as extreme weather events and rising sea levels.
• Energy Security: Wind and solar power, as renewable energy sources, provide a diverse and decentralized energy supply. This reduces dependence on finite and geopolitically sensitive fossil fuel reserves, enhancing energy security and resilience.
• Economic Opportunities: The renewable energy sector fosters job creation and economic growth. Investments in clean energy technologies stimulate innovation, create employment opportunities, and contribute to developing a robust and sustainable economy.
• Public Health Improvement: Transitioning away from fossil fuels decreases the release of harmful pollutants, leading to improved air and water quality. This, in turn, positively impacts public health by reducing respiratory illnesses and other pollution-related diseases.
• Resource Conservation: Unlike finite fossil fuel reserves, renewable sources are inherently sustainable and inexhaustible. By harnessing the power of sunlight, wind, water, and geothermal heat, societies can meet their energy needs without depleting limited natural resources.
• Technological Advancements: The transition to renewables drives innovation and technological advancements. Research and development in clean energy technologies contribute to a cleaner environment and the advancement of scientific knowledge and industrial capabilities.
• Global Cooperation: The shift to renewable energy encourages international collaboration to address shared challenges. Collaborative efforts in research, development, and the adoption of clean energy technologies can foster diplomatic ties and strengthen global cooperation.

Types of Renewable Energy

Sources naturally replenished on a human timescale, making them sustainable and environmentally friendly, derive renewable energy. Listed below are the main types of renewable energy:

• Solar Power: While solar thermal systems use sunshine to heat a fluid that produces steam to power turbines, photovoltaic cells use sunlight to convert light into energy.
• Wind Energy: Wind turbines are machines that use the wind’s kinetic energy to generate electricity through wind energy. When the wind rotates the turbine blades, a generator transforms that rotational energy into electrical energy. Onshore or offshore locations often host wind farms.
• Hydropower: Hydropower produces electricity by harnessing the energy of flowing water. Run-of-river systems divert a portion of a river’s flow, while dam-based hydropower involves the controlled release of stored water through turbines to generate power.
• Biomass Energy: Organic materials like wood, agricultural waste, and agricultural residues produce biomass energy. Biomass can produce heat, electricity, and biofuels through combustion or anaerobic digestion, offering a versatile energy source.
• Geothermal Energy: Geothermal energy taps into the Earth’s internal heat by harnessing steam or hot water beneath the Earth’s surface. Geothermal power plants convert this thermal energy into electricity, providing a consistent and reliable power source.
• Tidal Energy: Tidal energy harnesses the moon’s and sun’s gravitational pull to create electricity as the tides rise and fall. Utilizing underwater turbines allows tidal stream devices to capture the energy of the water’s flow.
• Wave Energy: Wave energy captures the motion of ocean waves to generate electricity. Wave energy converters, including point absorbers and oscillating water columns, convert waves’ up and down motion into usable power.
• Hydrogen Energy: Hydrogen, often considered a carrier of energy, can be produced through electrolysis using renewable electricity. It is a clean fuel for various applications, including transportation and industrial processes, emitting only water vapor when used.

Technological advancements

Technological breakthroughs have shaped the modern world, revolutionizing industries and elevating people’s standard of living. Several key areas highlight the profound impact of technology on society:

• Information Technology (IT): The evolution of IT has transformed communication, information access, and business operations. The development of the Internet, cloud computing , and mobile technologies has facilitated instantaneous global communication, d ata storage , and access to vast amounts of information.
• Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning: AI and ML have ushered in a new era of automation and decision-making capabilities. From autonomous vehicles to predictive analytics in healthcare, these technologies continue to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and problem-solving across various industries.
• Biotechnology: Advances in biotechnology have revolutionized healthcare, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Gene editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9 offer unprecedented possibilities in treating genetic disorders, while biotech applications in agriculture improve crop yield and resilience.
• Renewable Energy Technologies: Clean energy generation is now more economical and efficient thanks to renewable energy technology, including energy storage systems, wind turbines, and solar panels. These innovations are pivotal in addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable practices.
• Nanotechnology: Nanotechnology manipulates materials at the atomic or molecular level. Nanotechnology has transformed the fields of materials science, electronics, and medicine. As a result, scientists have created sophisticated materials with unique qualities, developed more compact and potent electrical devices, and improved medication delivery methods.
• 3D Printing: Layer-by-layer construction of three-dimensional items is possible with additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing. This technology utilizes diverse applications, from prototyping and manufacturing to healthcare, producing custom implants and prosthetics.
• Blockchain Technology: The decentralized and secure ledger technology known as blockchain powers cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin . Beyond finance, it finds applications in supply chain management , voting systems, and ensuring the integrity and transparency of various processes.
• Quantum Computing: Using the ideas of quantum mechanics, quantum computing can execute intricate calculations at a pace impossible for conventional computers. This can potentially revolutionize fields such as cryptography, optimization problems, and drug discovery.
• Internet of Things (IoT): The technology known as the Internet of Things (IoT) enables commonplace objects to be linked to the Internet and gather and share data. This interconnectedness enhances efficiency in smart homes, cities, and industries, optimizing resource utilization and overall productivity.
• Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR): AR and VR technologies immerse users in virtual or augmented environments, transforming experiences in fields like gaming, education, healthcare, and training simulations.

Challenges and Solutions

Addressing the challenges posed by technological advancements, societal changes, and global issues requires proactive strategies and innovative solutions. Here are some main challenges and possible solutions:

• Cybersecurity Threats:
• Challenge: Due to the growing interconnectivity of systems and the dependence on digital technology, individuals and organizations are more vulnerable to cyber threats such as ransomware attacks and data breaches.
• Solution: Implementing robust cybersecurity measures, regular updates, and user education can help mitigate cyber risks. Collaboration between governments, industries, and cybersecurity experts is crucial for developing effective strategies.
• Privacy Concerns:
• Challenge: The collection and utilization of personal data by companies and governments raise concerns about privacy infringement.
• Solution: Implemented to safeguard people’s privacy rights, GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) and other stricter laws and policies exist. Innovations like privacy-enhancing technologies and decentralized identity solutions offer alternative approaches.
• Job Displacement Due to Automation:
• Challenge: Automation and artificial intelligence technologies can lead to job displacement and economic inequality.
• Solution: Reskilling and upskilling programs and focusing on education in emerging fields can prepare the workforce for the changing job landscape. Social policies like universal basic income (UBI) may provide a safety net during transitions.
• Environmental Degradation:
• Challenge: Industrial activities and resource exploitation contribute to environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
• Solution: Sustainable practices, renewable energy adoption, and circular economy principles can mitigate environmental impact. International cooperation and stringent environmental regulations also play a crucial role.
• Ethical Concerns in AI:
• Challenge: Ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence include biased algorithms, lack of transparency, and potential misuse.
• Solution: Implementing ethical guidelines and standards for AI development, promoting transparency in algorithms, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration on AI ethics can help address these concerns.
• Healthcare Access Disparities:
• Challenge: Access to quality healthcare is unique globally, with disparities exacerbated by factors such as geography and socioeconomic status.
• Solution: Telemedicine, mobile health applications, and innovative healthcare delivery models can improve access. International collaborations and investment in healthcare infrastructure can reduce disparities.
• Digital Inequality:
• Challenge: Not everyone has equal access to digital technologies, leading to disparities in education, economic opportunities, and social inclusion.
• Solution: Initiatives focusing on digital literacy, affordable internet access, and technology inclusion programs can bridge the digital divide. Governments and organizations can also invest in infrastructure to expand connectivity.
• Global Public Health Crises:
• Challenge: Events like pandemics can strain healthcare systems, disrupt economies, and create social upheaval.
• Solution: Preparedness plans, early warning systems, and international cooperation in research and resource allocation are crucial. Advances in biotechnology and data analytics can aid in swift responses.
• Ethical Use of Biotechnology:
• Challenge: Biotechnological advancements like gene editing raise ethical concerns about human enhancement and unintended consequences.
• Solution: Robust ethical frameworks, public engagement, and interdisciplinary dialogues involving ethicists, scientists, and policymakers can guide responsible biotechnological development.
• Energy Transition Challenges:
• Challenge: Shifting from traditional to renewable energy sources faces infrastructure, economic viability, and societal acceptance challenges.
• Solution: Government incentives, public awareness campaigns, and investment in research and development can accelerate the transition. Community involvement and stakeholder engagement are critical for successful adoption.

Global Initiatives and Policies

Global initiatives and policies play a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of technological, economic, and environmental progress. These initiatives often reflect the collective effort of nations to address shared challenges and promote cooperation in various domains. Here are some notable global initiatives and policies:

• Paris Agreement: Global leaders reached a global agreement to keep the rise in temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Nations aim to enhance climate resilience while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): The 17 goals address global issues, including poverty, inequality, and environmental sustainability. Goal 7 targets explicitly affordable and clean energy, promoting the transition to renewable sources.
• IRENA(International Renewable Energy Agency): An intergovernmental organization promoting the widespread use of renewable energy. IRENA facilitates cooperation among nations, provides policy advice, and supports capacity building for renewable energy projects.
• Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM): A forum bringing together energy ministers from various nations to promote clean energy policies, share best practices, and collaborate on initiatives to advance the global transition to low-carbon technologies.
• Mission Innovation: A global initiative involving 24 countries and the European Union, committed to doubling public investment in clean energy research and development over five years. It aims to accelerate innovation and make clean energy more affordable.
• European Green Deal: An ambitious EU policy framework aiming for climate neutrality by 2050. It describes plans to lower greenhouse gas emissions, support renewable energy, and completely revamp the European economy.
• Renewable Energy Policies at National Levels: Many countries have established specific policies and targets to promote renewable energy adoption. Examples include Germany’s Energiewende, India’s National Solar Mission, and China’s commitment to peak carbon emissions by 2030.
• Power Africa: An initiative by the U.S. government to increase access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Its main objectives are to encourage investment in the region’s power sector and to facilitate the development of renewable energy projects.
• Global Geothermal Alliance: Launched at COP21, the alliance promotes geothermal energy deployment worldwide. It encourages collaboration between governments, development partners, and the private sector to harness the potential of geothermal resources.
• ESMAP (World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program): ESMAP supports developing countries in building sustainable energy systems. It provides technical assistance, policy advice, and financial support for projects promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Case Studies

• Germany’s Energiewende: Germany’s ambitious energy transition, known as Energiewende, aims to shift from conventional energy sources to renewable energy. The country has made significant investments in wind and solar energy, enacted energy-saving measures, and plans to phase out nuclear power. The Energiewende case study exemplifies the integration of renewables into the energy mix and the challenges of maintaining grid balance during this transition.
• China’s Renewable Energy Expansion: China has become a global leader in renewable energy deployment. The country has significantly invested in wind and solar energy projects, increasing capacity. The case study explores China’s policy incentives, market dynamics, and technological advancements that have facilitated its rapid expansion in the renewable energy sector.
• Denmark’s Wind Power Success: Denmark has been a pioneer in wind energy, with wind power contributing significantly to its electricity generation. The case study delves into Denmark’s wind energy policies, including favorable regulatory frameworks, community engagement, and advancements in wind turbine technology. It highlights the economic and environmental benefits of widespread wind power adoption.
• California’s Renewable Energy Leadership: In the US, California has used renewable energy. The state’s case study examines its aggressive renewable portfolio standards, innovative policies promoting solar power, and the role of technology companies in driving clean energy initiatives. California’s experience demonstrates the potential for subnational entities to lead in renewable energy transitions.
• Rural Electrification in India through Solar Power: India’s case study focuses on rural electrification efforts using solar power. Initiatives like the National Solar Mission and off-grid solar projects have brought electricity to remote areas, transforming lives and fostering economic development. The study explores the challenges faced and lessons learned in scaling up solar energy access in a diverse and populous country.
• Costa Rica’s Renewable Energy Achievement: Costa Rica stands out for achieving high levels of renewable energy generation, primarily from hydropower, wind, and geothermal sources. The case study examines the country’s commitment to environmental sustainability, policies promoting clean energy, and the role of hydropower in maintaining a reliable and renewable energy supply.
• South Australia’s Grid Transformation: South Australia’s case study illustrates its transition to a renewable energy-dominant grid. The state has faced challenges related to grid stability and intermittency but has also demonstrated successful integration of wind and solar power. The study delves into the policy measures, technological solutions, and lessons learned in South Australia’s journey toward a low-carbon energy system.
• Morocco’s Concentrated Solar Power Project: Morocco’s case study focuses on the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex, one of the world’s most significant concentrated solar power projects. The initiative aims to harness solar energy for electricity generation, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and contribute to national energy security. The study explores the project’s technological innovations, financing models, and the impact on Morocco’s energy landscape.

Future Prospects

The future of energy holds exciting possibilities as technological advancements and evolving societal priorities shape the landscape. Several key prospects are likely to influence the trajectory of the global energy sector:

• Emerging Technologies: Ongoing research and development in renewable energy technologies will likely yield breakthroughs in efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and energy storage. Innovations such as advanced solar cells, next-generation wind turbines, and novel energy storage solutions will be crucial in shaping the future energy landscape.
• Tidal and Wave Energy: Tidal and wave energy, largely untapped at present, hold significant potential for sustainable power generation. As technologies mature, harnessing the kinetic energy of ocean tides and waves could contribute to a more diverse and reliable renewable energy mix.
• Advanced Solar Technologies: Continued advancements in solar technologies, including thin-film solar cells, tandem solar cells, and solar paint, are anticipated. These innovations aim to enhance the efficiency of solar energy capture and broaden its applications across various industries.
• Integration into Various Sectors: One of the most important aspects of the energy landscape of the future is integrating renewable energy into various sectors, including industrial processes and transportation. Electric vehicles, green hydrogen production, and sustainable manufacturing will likely gain prominence.
• Energy Transition in Developing Countries: A significant role in the global energy transition is expected to be played by developing countries. International collaborations, financial support, and technology transfer will empower these nations to leapfrog traditional fossil fuel-dependent phases of development and embrace cleaner energy solutions.
• Smart Grids and Energy Storage: Deploying smart power grids, in conjunction with advanced energy storage solutions, will simplify the integration of renewable energy resources in existing power systems. Battery technologies, grid-scale storage, and demand-response mechanisms will enhance grid reliability and flexibility.
• Decentralized Energy Systems: Decentralized energy systems, such as community microgrids and distributed energy resources, will likely become more prevalent. These systems empower communities to generate, store, and manage their energy locally, promoting resilience and energy independence.
• Circular Economy in Energy: The adoption of circular economy principles in the energy sector will gain traction, emphasizing resource efficiency, recycling, and waste reduction. This strategy seeks to mitigate the harmful consequences of energy production and consumption on nature.
• Policy and Regulatory Shifts: Governments worldwide are expected to implement more ambitious policies and regulations to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Carbon pricing, renewable energy mandates, and incentives for sustainable practices will shape the regulatory environment.
• Global Collaboration: International cooperation and collaboration will be crucial for addressing global energy challenges. Shared research initiatives, technology transfer, and joint efforts to combat climate change will foster a collective approach to building a sustainable energy future.

The global shift towards renewable energy is pivotal in fostering a sustainable future. The imperative to mitigate climate change, ensure energy security, and promote economic prosperity underscores the significance of embracing clean technologies. The trajectory towards a low-carbon energy landscape becomes increasingly tangible as nations unite in initiatives like the Paris Agreement and implement robust policies. The successes of case studies from Germany to China demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of renewable energy adoption. By continuing to innovate, invest, and collaborate, humanity can unlock the full potential of renewable sources, ensuring a resilient and environmentally responsible energy paradigm for generations to come.

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Solar-driven carbon dioxide reduction: a review of recent developments and future prospects

• Published: 09 September 2024

Cite this article

• Omar H. AL-Zoubi 1 ,
• Somavia Ameen 2 ,
• Farag M. A. Altalbawy 3 ,
• Carlos Rodriguez-Benites 4 ,
• Soumya V. Menon 5 ,
• Mandeep Kaur 6 ,
• I. B. Sapaev 7 , 8 , 9 ,
• Merwa Alhadrawi 10 , 11 , 12 ,
• G V Sivaprasad 13 &
• Hussam Abdali Abdulridui 14  

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This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the rapidly evolving field of solar-driven carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) conversion, focusing on recent developments and future prospects. While significant progress has been made in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of photocatalytic (PC), photoelectrocatalytic, photobiocatalytic, and photothermal CO 2 reduction, the efficient and scalable utilization of these technologies remains a challenge. The analysis critically examines the latest advancements in materials and catalysts, including light-harvesting centers, charge transfer interfaces, and catalytically active sites, highlighting their critical role in optimizing efficiency and selectivity. This study examines the recent progress made in PC, photoelectrochemical, and photovoltaic-electrochemical devices, identifying key challenges and opportunities for future research. By highlighting the gap between current research and practical applications, this review aims to provide valuable insights for the development of sustainable and cost-effective technologies for CO 2 conversion, contributing to a cleaner and more sustainable energy future.

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Omar H. AL-Zoubi

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AL-Zoubi, O.H., Ameen, S., Altalbawy, F.M.A. et al. Solar-driven carbon dioxide reduction: a review of recent developments and future prospects. Chem. Pap. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-024-03636-7

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11696-024-03636-7

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Energy Conservation Essay for Students and Children

500 words energy conservation essay.

Energy conservation refers to the efforts made to reduce the consumption of energy. The energy on Earth is not in unlimited supply. Furthermore, energy can take plenty of time to regenerate. This certainly makes it essential to conserve energy. Most noteworthy, energy conservation is achievable either by using energy more efficiently or by reducing the amount of service usage.

Importance of Energy Conservation

First of all, energy conservation plays an important role in saving non-renewable energy resources. Furthermore, non-renewable energy sources take many centuries to regenerate. Moreover, humans consume energy at a faster rate than it can be produced. Therefore, energy conservation would lead to the preservation of these precious non-renewable sources of energy.

Energy conservation will reduce the expenses related to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are very expensive to mine. Therefore, consumers are required to pay higher prices for goods and services. Energy conservation would certainly reduce the amount of fossil fuel being mined. This, in turn, would reduce the costs of consumers.

Consequently, energy conservation would strengthen the economy as consumers will have more disposable income to spend on goods and services.

Energy conservation is good for scientific research. This is because; energy conservation gives researchers plenty of time to conduct researches.

Therefore, these researchers will have more time to come up with various energy solutions and alternatives. Humans must ensure to have fossil fuels as long as possible. This would give me enough time to finding practical solutions.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Another important reason for energy conservation is environmental protection. This is because various energy sources are significantly harmful to the environment. Furthermore, the burning of fossil fuels considerably pollutes the atmosphere. Moreover, nuclear energy creates dangerous nuclear waste. Hence, energy conservation will lead to environmental protection.

Energy conservation would also result in the good health of humans. Furthermore, the pollution released due to energy sources is harmful to the human body. The air pollution due to fossil fuels can cause various respiratory problems. Energy sources can pollute water which could cause several harmful diseases in humans. Nuclear waste can cause cancer and other deadly problems in the human body.

Measures to Conserve Energy

Energy taxation is a good measure from the government to conserve energy. Furthermore, several countries apply energy or a carbon tax on energy users. This tax would certainly put pressure on energy users to reduce their energy consumption. Moreover, carbon tax forces energy users to shift to other energy sources that are less harmful.

Building design plays a big role in energy conservation. An excellent way to conserve energy is by performing an energy audit in buildings. Energy audit refers to inspection and analysis of energy use in a building. Most noteworthy, the aim of the energy audit is to appropriately reduce energy input.

Another important way of energy conservation is by using energy-efficient products. Energy-efficient products are those that use lesser energy than their normal counterparts. One prominent example can be using an energy-efficient bulb rather than an incandescent light bulb.

In conclusion, energy conservation must be among the utmost priorities of humanity. Mahatma Gandhi was absolutely right when he said, “the earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs but not every man’s greed”. This statement pretty much sums up the importance of energy conservation. Immediate implementation of energy conservation measures is certainly of paramount importance.

FAQs on Energy Conservation

Q1 state one way in which energy conservation is important.

A1 One way in which energy conservation is important is that it leads to the preservation of fossil fuels.

Q2 Why energy taxation is a good measure to conserve energy?

A2 Energy taxation is certainly a good measure to conserve energy. This is because energy taxation puts financial pressure on energy users to reduce their energy consumption.

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