A Brief Overview of the Renewable Energy
Industry
Renewable
energy is not a new topic. The first wind turbines were built in 1887 by
Professor James Blyth, while the first solar power system were built in France.
However, due to several factors like costs, efficiency, geographical
disadvantage and technological advancement, human shifted to coal energy and nuclear
energy.
Now,
humans are finding possibilities to go back to renewable energy due to several
reasons. Pollution is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and
gas. Incidents like Japanese nuclear crisis in Fukushima have raised awareness on
human kind to make renewable energy viable economically and efficiently.
Although the rate of meltdown is very low at 1.5 percent, the huge risk of
meltdown that impacts the environment, the economy and health cannot be unseen.
Bigger
investments and higher involvement from authorities, led by huge economies such
as China, United States and Japan encourages the movement for renewable energy.
On the other hand, emerging countries like Kenya, Indonesia and Turkey has also
invested in clean energy. With the increase of capital, more resources and
research could be done to helps us improve or invent new technologies. Malaysia
is one of the main producer and exporter of palm oil in the world, thus there
are researches on converting oil palm and oil palm wastes into biodiesels.
In
a business perspective, renewable energy tends to have cost disadvantages
compared to non-renewable energy. However, the disadvantages gap is getting
closer and expected to be diminished in the next 10 years, while renewable
energies have way lower cost of damage to the environment. With viable economic
scale and cost, business landscape is expected to be changed and new business
opportunities like rural residential lighting, grid-based power generation and
new transport fuel are waiting for entrepreneurs to harvest.
In
a world that embraces capitalism, running the cost down is the number one
priority of researchers. With new technologies emerging, the day where human
uses 100% clean energy may arrive faster than we have expected. As for this
blog, out of the many alternative renewable energy sources, we hope to focus
and cover on solar energy and its related technologies.
References:
Butti, K. & Perlin, J., 1980. A Golden Thread: 2500
Years of Solar Architecture and Technology. 1st ed. Cheshire: Cheshire Books.
Chai, S., Mohamed, A. & Sumathi, S., 2008. Utilization
of oil palm as a source of renewable energy in Malaysia. Renewable and
Sustainable Energy Reviews, 12(9), p. 2404.
Heinrichs, A., 2010. Sustaining Earth's Energy Resources
(Environment at Risk). 1st ed. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Corp.
Hoeve, J. E. T. & Jacobson, M. Z., 2012. Worldwide
health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Energy &
Environmental Science, 5(9), pp. 8743-8757.
Martinot, E. et al., 2002. Renewable energy markets in
developing countries. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Volume 27,
pp. 309-348.
McCrone, A. et al., 2015. Global Trends in Renewable Energy
Investment Report, Frankfurt: Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre for
Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance.
Owen, A. D., 2006. Renewable energy: Externality costs as
market barriers. Energy Policy, 34(5), pp. 623-642.
Editors: Team 6, S
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