#3 Unique Renewable Energy Sources

The podcast discusses the issue of renewable energy not being widely used globally, despite its benefits in reducing carbon footprint. It highlights examples of countries like the EU, Scotland, Germany, and China that have made progress in adopting renewable energy. The key factors driving adoption include the decreasing cost of renewable technology compared to traditional sources like coal and gas, concerns about increasing electricity costs, and the need to reduce air pollution. The podcast emphasizes the importance of broader policy changes and influencing the social mindset towards climate change to encourage widespread adoption of renewable energy. Good morning, good evening, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to my podcast where today we'll wrap up our unique renewable energy series. So today's topic is to discuss the overall issue regarding renewable energy not being used all over the world if it is so beneficial for people and decreasing our carbon footprint. So I'll probably start by discussing why this is a problem, what needs to happen, and then finally a couple of solutions in places that have been able to find ways to solve this problem. Okay. If I remember in this series, in the beginning I mentioned a lot of unique renewable energy resources, and a good majority of them have come from countries in Europe. Remember how I talked about the Scottish whisky industry having a lot of anaerobic digestion with their leftover grain? And then the heat fed system at Sweden's central station? And the last thing I remember was the club in the Netherlands that had a dance floor that converts kinetic energy to electricity. Well, not surprisingly, more than 20 percent of energy consumed in the EU comes from renewable resources or any other type of sources. So the EU's 32 percent target for 2030 I believe is being revised, but they also changed it to an increase to 45 percent by 2030. And from what I read online, this increase could be attributed to two things that happened in 2022 that made renewables outcompete both coal and gas, which was basically renewable technology getting reliably cheaper while its competitors are getting more expensive. Think about how oil, gas, and coal are commodities. And as physical goods, their prices are dictated by volatility in markets. So oil prices shocks occur once every few years, but solar and wind prices pretty much depend on technology getting better, which follows a much more predictable curve as it gets cheaper and more advanced. So while technology still has room for improvement, what's needed is not so much a better wind turbine or solar panel as much as broader policy changes that encourage more widespread adoption. And so that's where we'll start seeing more unique methods too. Fun fact from what I saw online and from what I've learned, the Russian-Ukrainian war turned out to be the crisis to propel the adoption of renewable energy. So, for example, European households and businesses turned to rooftop solar energy last year as they worried about the increasing electricity costs, and that added three times as many electricity production or use – well, not use, so I meant production in 2022 as in the year before. So it seems that whoever is in power in these EU countries are the ones who said the policies have changed. So it really is a matter of influencing a social mindset towards climate change, and that's where the real problem lies, in my opinion. What I do know is that the one thing that convinces people to do things is when money is involved. For example, Europe has turned to renewables since they don't have access to the affordable fossil fuels from Russia, so they're making more drastic changes. And so I think it's time to move on to countries with solutions to this issue, so I'm going to start with Scotland. The Scottish government has seen renewables and climate action as an economic opportunity – remember that – rather than just an environmental thing that has to be done. Again, they were able to do this by having money profits involved with the problem. For example, they know the threat of pests, diseases, and invasive non-native species could result in damage to some food production, so agricultural land managers had to find a way to manage the threats and opportunities linked to farming and climate change. Another challenge is also integrating renewable energy into the energy infrastructure. The existing electricity grid needs to be adapted, and it's important for grid participants need to be able to communicate in some kind of network, which could include something like a smart grid, having more storage capacity for renewable energy, and also more large investments. So now we all know it's easier for these smaller countries to convert its citizens to green energy. I think the real problem is with the bigger ones, so like Germany, China, the U.S. So I'll talk about the real solutions for those to wrap up the pause. Starting with Germany, I think it is estimated that around 35 or 40 billion euro is planned for deconstruction of better high-voltage transmission lines, and they're also planning on having larger investments planned for the local distribution grids, as well as new communication technology to identify any kind of problems or bottlenecks they encounter. Next up is China, a big one and an important one. They set a 13-year plan to achieve a global green energy net. So this is a little bit easier to explain why they did this, but they wanted to reduce their air pollution because it's an obvious issue if you didn't know about it. It's so much of an issue that they face deaths from pollution, so constant discontent among the population and a lot of many other protests swept across the country, which helps convince the local leaders to move forward on this problem. In terms of the economy, I believe China is the largest producer of energy like coal, and they are highly dependent on fossil resources, which can have high costs. And when you have any price disturbances in the market, it affects their market income. They've lost – from what I remember, I think the most amount of economic losses they've had was about half a billion dollars. So it's pretty reasonable that they wanted to make a dominant position in the renewable energy market. So mainly what I want to say after saying all these examples is that our political leaders need to be convinced, just as these other countries have. Starting with slowly integrating a smart power grid and investments will greatly, in my opinion, lead to more unique renewable energy sources, as we have all seen in these countries. So thank you guys for taking the time to listen to all of my podcasts in this unique renewable energy series, and I hope you have a wonderful next rest of your day. Thank you.