November 23, 2017
Developing Countries Leading Renewable Energy Adoption
Developing countries are rapidly becoming the leaders in renewable energy adoption, leaving their developed nation counterparts so far behind it could be decades before they catch up.
Some interesting things are going on in Africa with off-grid solar. In Kenya many places have two choices: off-grid solar or diesel generated power. Solar companies are cropping up everywhere and installing residential solar then charging a nominal fee per day. People pay with their cell phones.
Nuvation Energy has also seen a big uptick in interest in energy storage from India, which has enormous power generation problems.
Where in North America we are looking at renewables and storage as a way to reduce generation costs and fossil fuel consumption, these developing countries are rapidly moving towards it as deployment costs become more viable as solution to power grids that simply don’t generate enough power to serve the people, leaving people literally in the dark on a daily basis. Or poisoning them to death from dirty power generation sources like coal and diesel.
China has a smog problem that is killing 1.1 million people per year. China added 35 Gigawatts of solar in 2016 alone – that’s more than Germany’s total capacity, installed in one year! The United States, in comparison, currently has 47 GW total. One wind turbine goes up every hour in China, and enough solar to cover a football field – every hour! The Chinese government has committed to spending 360 billion dollars on renewable energy over the next 3 years.
As of June 2015 the U.S. had 16,000 public EV charging stations. Comparatively China installed 100,000 stations in 2016 alone, bringing their total to 150,000 charging stations, covering 14,000 kilometers of highway. In Beijing and Shanghai you can find a charging station within 5km of wherever you are. Range anxiety for EV adoption – gone! By 2020 China plans to have an EV infrastructure that supports 5 million electric vehicles.