The Good Society--Energy Renewables

The revolution has begun, energy renewables are gaining ground. In this interview with Amory Lovins, by John Vidal, from the Guardian, some amazing facts. Since 2008, half the world's added electrical generating capacity has been renewable. Non hydro-electric renewables, chiefly wind and solar, were 49% of US and 69% of European capacity added last year. In three of the world's top four economies, China, Japan and Germany, there was more generation of electricity from non-hydro renewables than from nuclear in 2012.

China got more generation from wind in 2012 than from nuclear and it added more generation from non-hydro renewable energy than fossil and nuclear combined. It is now the world leader in seven of the 10 renewable energies and wants to be top in all 10. It appears to have added 12GW of photovoltaics in 2012 – that's more than the total that have been installed in the US. The energy intensity of the US economy has declined 50% in 10 years, mostly because of better design. In 2012 the energy used to make a dollar of GDP went down by 3.4% in one year. We can see a very clear way forward to trebling energy efficiency by 2050. Most encouraging, he says, is that 14 states for electricity and 20 for natural gas now reward consumers for cutting bills. "That is the reverse of the use of electricity as a commodity. Electricity is an infrastructure, not a commodity. We need to reward the provider to give you lower bills".

I wonder how Canada compares to this?

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