Investments in renewable energy
grow 25%
Feb 13, 2011 - zawya.com
Renewable energy has notably penetrated
energy markets and provides about 19 per cent of
international energy needs in 2009, with a capacity
of 1230 GW, an increase of 7 per cent over 2008,
said Renewable Energy Policy Network in a study.
It also contributed with about 18 per cent of electricity
generated in 2009. China, USA and Germany are the
most advanced countries in this field.
It is expected that by 2030, renewable energy will
represent 22 per cent of total world power supplies
according to expectations of International Energy
Agency (IEA) in one of its scenarios to measure power
supply volume (the scenario related to stabilizing
greenhouse gases by 450 parts per million of carbon-dioxide
equivalent). Another scenario from IEA expected that
renewable energy will have 14.2 per cent of total
supplies by 2030 based on current normal growth.
There are three main factors that make countries
invest in renewable energy. The first one is to satisfy
its needs of energy, which represent the corn stone
of sustainable development. Statistics show that
demand on energy will increase over the coming years
to keep pace with expected accelerated growth in
world economy, especially in countries like China
and India, with continuous decrease of world reserve
of traditional energy, which is expected to be a
more difficult problem over time.
The second factor is calls for the need to deal
more effectively with environment problems, work
on decreasing greenhouse gases and facing environmental
threats like climate change and global warming, which
increase every day. Renewable energy can satisfy
our needs and decrease greenhouse gases at the same
time.
The third factor is continuous increase in oil and
gas prices and the expectations that its production
costs will increase in the future with the decrease
of renewable energy costs. This decrease may be resulting
from the advancement of renewable energy production
technology, and this decrease is expected to continue
over the coming years.
Furthermore, this field provides new investment
opportunities whether directly, by investing in this
activity, or indirectly, through services and products
required by this industry. Additionally, it provides
job opportunities, as workers in this field all over
the world exceed 3 million in 2009, and this number
is expected to double during the coming few years.
Renewable energy is not a magical solution for all
problems related to energy. Despite benefits of these
alternatives, there are some difficulties in its
usage, as it is not always available on demand, because
it is seasonal, it requires large initial investments
and requires structural changes in world energy infrastructure.
However, renewable energy stills a strategic option
to ensure future power supply, knowing that there
are accelerated developments in this field and that
researches and studies made a large decrease in its
production costs, whether initial or operational
costs.
Investments in renewable energy made a huge rise
during the period 2005-2009, where growth rate reached
230 per cent during this period. "Considering
global investments in this field in 2009, we find
that it reached $162 billion, despite economic stagnation
after the world crisis. Expectations refer to an
increase in investment volume in clean energy by
25 per cent in 2010 to reach $200 billion," according
to Abu Dhabi's Economic Studies Department report.
The Group of Twenty (G-20) has about 90 per cent
of investments in renewable energy field. On the
countries level, China came in the first place in
investments with about $34.6 billion in 2009, while
USA came second with $18.6 billion.
In the UAE, Abu Dhabi is pumping billions of dollars
into developing renewable energy and lessening dependence
on the oil income.
Oil and Gas revenues, since the beginning of production
and exporting, played the leading role in the general
development in Abu Dhabi and UAE in general. Oil
revenues made a huge change in socio-economic structure
of Abu Dhabi over four decades. The emirate became
one of the modern societies and has flourishing economy,
excellent infrastructure and high living levels.
Abu Dhabi comes in the 7th place in the world regarding
proven oil reserves (92.2bn barrels) according to
the list of world oil reserves, which represent 7.5
per cent of global reserves and about 95 per cent
of UAE's reserves. The current production of Abu
Dhabi amounts to over 8 per cent of the total production
of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) with 901 million barrels annually. The Emirate
also comes in the 7th place in the world regarding
gas reserves with 212 trillion cubic feet.
Despite there are huge reserves enough to continue
production with the current rates for more than a
century, and the increase in oil and gas prices according
to analyses, Abu Dhabi believes in the necessity
to work hard to find alternatives for traditional
energy to be integrated with available sources to
satisfy future needs for the Emirate.
This is highlighted in 2030 Economic Vision for
Abu Dhabi. Working on developing strong infrastructure
that is capable of supporting economic growth through
ensuring power supply to satisfy future needs is
one of the seven areas of Abu Dhabi's economic policy.
Abu Dhabi take big steps to develop energy sector,
which is a strategic option to ensure sustainability
of supplies during different development stages identified
in ambitious economic vision for the emirate by 2030.
All indicators refer to an increase in local demand
on different energy sources in Abu Dhabi and UAE
in general, especially in electric power generation
and water desalination as a result to expansion in
infrastructure and industrial structures and other
sectors. Also, Abu Dhabi seeks to better exploit
available energy sources and resources, including
Solar and Wind energy in the first place.
Choosing Abu Dhabi to be the headquarters of IRENA
is considered an international acknowledgement of
Abu Dhabi position and crowning for its efforts in
this field. Worth mentioning that UAE has invested
about 7 billion dollars in 2008 in clean energy projects
and plans to increase its investments to 50 billion
dollars by 2015. UAE also plans to increase the contribution
of renewable energy sources to 7 per cent to satisfy
its energy needs by 2020.
Renewable energy sector in Abu Dhabi is about to
takeoff, as Abu Dhabi has performed many projects
and initiatives in that sector and drawn a strategy
relies on developing clean energy from existing traditional
sources, in addition to developing untraditional
patterns of renewable energy, where it transferred
into using natural gas to generate electrical power
with about 100 per cent. It also relies on natural
gas to desalinate sea water. All of these efforts
are part of Abu Dhabi's endeavors to reduce greenhouse
gases and support environmental plans to provide
clean energy from traditional sources.
Abu Dhabi also started developing a peaceful nuclear
program, under supervision of International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), by building four nuclear power
plants with a capacity of 1400 MW each. It is planned
to start building the first nuclear plant by 2012
and a group of companies from South Korea will perform
the project. The first plant is expected to start
supplying national network with electricity in 2017,
while the other three plants are expected to be completed
by 2020.
This is only the start towards transition into using
clean energy, as Abu Dhabi seeks to strength renewable
energy role as a more sustainable and less contamination
alternative. UAE has already started some projects
to generate electrical power and desalinate sea water
using renewable energy, such as (Om Al Nar) plant
in Abu Dhabi that represent a scientific and practical
example for one of water desalination technologies
using solar energy. It also announced the commencement
of generating electrical power from the largest power
generator using wind power in the Middle East, on "Seer
Bani Yas" island with a capacity of more than
850 KW/H. This power is currently used to supply
island's utilities with electricity in addition to
power supplied by national network.
Additionally, Abu Dhabi announced launch of Zayed
Future Energy Prize with an amount of 2.2 million
dollars annually. The prize is presented to honor
individuals, companies, institutions and non-governmental
entities that make great contributions to develop
sustainable innovations and solutions to meet current
needs and future requirements of energy all over
the world.
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