Renewable Energy Fulfilled A Hundred Percent Of The Electricity Needs

Silicon Republic

Everyone had become fully dependent on fossil fuels at one point in time. This is the main driver behind global warming, and people are starting to feel its effects. The weather changes that happened wreaked havoc everywhere, and this has caught so many off-guard.

Because fossil fuels have become somewhat dangerous, some have shifted to renewable energy. And why not? Mother Nature has so much to offer. All people have to do is figure out how to harness it. The best part of it all is that this is free, safe, and doable.

They made an accounting on this and found impressive results. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric power supply seen to have increased. So much so that it met a 100 percent of new power installations all over the world, particularly  during the first half of this year. This numbers showed that this was able to stave off a 4 percent increase in fossil-fuel generation and avoided $40 billion in fuel costs and 230 million tons of CO2 in emissions. This is already an impressive feat that it could only be better.

The popularity rise of wind and solar energies prevented a 4 percent increase in fossil fuel electricity use all over the world. In China, for instance, the rise of wind and solar allowed the fossil fuel power use to decline by 3 percent. Without this rise, fossil fuels would have increased by a percent. In India, on the other hand, use of fossil fuel power increased by 9 percent, but this would have been 12 percent if some of them didn’t resort to wind and solar power. As for the United States, the use of renewable energy allowed to slow the rise of fossil fuel power from 7 percent to just a mere 1 percent. And in the EU, fossil fuel power went up by 6 percent, but then again, the world would have seen a 16 percent rise if wind and solar didn’t increase.


While fossil-fuel generation went down during the first half of the year, coal and gas generation went up in the months of July and August. This has led experts to believe that there is a possibility that the power sector emissions in 2022 may also go up if this were to follow the all-time high figures they’ve seen from the previous year.

All the details were compiled in a report by a London energy think tank known as Ember. In fact, across the 75 countries representing 90 percent of global electricity demand, the report saw how the renewable sources such as wind, solar, and hydro went up by 416 terawatt hours (TWh). This has slightly exceeded the rise of electricity demand at around 389 TWh.

Basically, the report explained how that at any time, utility companies in 75 countries demanded more electricity generation. Hence, these companies have chosen to install a renewable source of energy. While there was a rise, it must be noted that this didn’t make the existing fossil fuel sources unusable. However, as GNN reported previously, the rise in renewable energy that comes from richer nations has enabled some of them, in particular, countries such as Germany and Australia. This happened because the places needed to meet 100 percent of the electricity demand without having to resort to burning a cubic meter of gas.


Wiatros-Motyka, senior analyst at Ember, said, “We can’t be sure if we’ve reached peak coal and gas in the power sector. Global power sector emissions are still pushing all-time highs when they need to be falling very quickly. And the same fossil fuels pushing us into a climate crisis are also causing the global energy crisis. We have a solution: Wind and solar are homegrown and cheap, and are already cutting both bills and emissions fast.”

The numbers have come to be because electricity demand will differ throughout the day. Of course, if provided that this doesn’t go beyond a certain limit, the input coming from renewables to the grid can and will suffice the demand.

Essentially, the demand for fossil fuel has maintained its figures and have basically remained unchanged between the first six months of 2022 and the first six months of 2021. There’s also a possibility that this will likely increase as countries welcome in the winter season at a time that there is energy scarcity in Europe.

“The growth in wind and solar prevented a 4% rise in fossil fuel electricity generation worldwide,” the report said in its executive summary. “In China, the growth in wind and solar enabled fossil fuel power to fall by 3 percent.”

 

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