Popular and media interest in renewable energy has waned in recent months but two reports issued this month show that the industry is growing in capacity and investment, spreading geographically, and delivering energy at increasingly cheaper prices. REN21’s Global Status Report is a mammoth, 170-page document but is written and produced well making it easy to review. The second is a short document produced by NRDC to benchmark various countries on their renewable energy footprints.
Even so, the industry faces a number of challenges. Technology is developing slowly, subsidies continue to be important, and grid integration poses a number of challenges. This was seen in an interesting layout of articles in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. In two side-by-side pieces, the Journal first reported on how Japan’s new feed-in tariffs may not be sufficient for material supply of renewable power, while a second article just across talked about how the country was restarting a nuclear plant to meet electricity demand.
