Energy Archives - Green Businesses

The Current State of Wind Power in Europe

Wind power has become a major source of renewable energy in Europe in recent years. With increasing concerns over climate change and the need for cleaner, more sustainable energy sources, wind power has seen tremendous growth in Europe. In this research topic, the current state of wind power in Europe will be explored in detail. Firstly, the current installed capacity of wind power in Europe will be discussed. According to the European Wind Energy Association, as of 2020, the total installed capacity of wind power in Europe was approximately 235 GW. This represents a significant increase from just a few years earlier, and demonstrates the rapid growth of wind power in the region. Another important factor to consider is the contribution of wind power to the overall energy mix in Europe. Currently, wind power accounts for approximately 10% of the total electricity generated in Europe. This is a significant increase from just a few years ago, and demonstrates the growing imp…

Will the Green Growth Strategy Lead to Promising Business Opportunities? Exploring the Future Five Years from Now

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about great changes in our society and business environment. To grasp the nature of the social transformation arising from this ongoing event, since May 2020 Nikkei BP has been conducting a series of surveys of Japanese businesspeople (more than 11,000 in total). The results unveil major alterations in their mindsets. Following the Japanese government's declaration on realizing "Carbon Neutrality by 2050" in October 2020, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) took the lead in formulating the "Green Growth Strategy through Achieving Carbon Neutrality in 2050," which was unveiled in December of the same year. The Ministry positions this strategy as "an industrial policy to lead the challenging goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, a vision that is upheld by the Suga administration and aims toward a positive cycle of economic growth and the environmental protection." The strategy emphasizes 14 sectors as priority fields (Fig…

A Climate Awakening

This year has been the hottest year on record and this has been a trend for the past 3 consecutive years. Fire season has moved from summer to February in many wildfire hotspot locations. For 3 days last week, I was trained by Al Gore on the current state of the climate and how to become a leader in the topic – a Climate Reality Leader. 972 people being in Denver, CO wanting to learn, network, connect, motivate and take action had me certain that the most successful people would see the possibility of tackling this pertinent issue head on. With 97% of scientists aware that the climate is changing due to human causes, climate change is no longer a liberal or conservative issue. Al Gore calls it the Sustainability Revolution. Like the Industrial Revolution and the Digital Revolution, sustainability is finding its way into every industry and its making business more efficient and cost-effective, and with it comes a better quality of life. Yet deniers still wave their hands …

Renewable Energy Developers Wanted to Spread the Green

by Ken Silverstein for Forbes

Smaller enterprises want energy developers to spread the green, allowing them to get in on the renewable wave rolling through America. The dynamic has made it easier for larger corporations with more demand to buy wind and solar electricity but it has nudged out the less brawnier brands.

The guys at Google and Facebook, for example, are stimulating the need for wind and solar energy that they are using to feed their electricity-starved data centers. The developers of those energy projects, in return, are getting solid customers that are buying their output at a fixed price over a certain period of years.

But individual commercial and industrial customers aren’t generating the type of demand that can propel big energy projects into the market. Now, though, that may change. The same so-called power purchase agreements that are used to attract the likes of Microsoft, Intel and SA…

China Now Largest Investor Renewable Energies Worldwide

BEIJING, July 3, 2016 (Xinhua) -- A full solar power vehicle is presented during a ceremony held by Chinese renewable energy company Hanergy Holding Group in Beijing, capital of China, July 2, 2016. Hanergy launched four full solar power vehicles at the ceremony on Saturday. (Xinhua/Cai Yang) (wx)[/caption] The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday launched its first detailed report of global energy investment, with China singled out for praise. In the first detailed analysis of investment across the global energy system, the IEA reported that global energy investment fell by 8 percent in 2015, with a drop in oil and gas upstream spending outweighing continued robust investment in renewable energies, electricity networks and energy efficiency. Total investment in the energy sector reached 1.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015, down from 2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2014, according to the IEA's World Energy Investment 2016 report. The new annual report provides a compre…

BioGas Provides Germany with Steady, Stinky Energy

So when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, solar and wind energy may be nonexistent, but renewable energy can still be economically produced from the smelliest of sources. The more the stink, the greater the energy–Biogas energy. Local farmers use the waste their animals produce and send it into a biogas facility on their farm that produces electricity. They can also add corn and the fermentation substrate is then sprayed on the fields as fertilizer. This closed-loop system provides steady and sustainable energy to supplement the energy needs of larger but less predictable outputs from solar and wind sources.

Next Power Plants co-Founder, Hendrik Samisch networks over 1,000 renewable energy plants comprised of individual farms in Germany through a data grid and a bank of computers that make up a powerful virtual power plant that trades annually over $100 million euros of electricity in biogas energy.

Watch the …