Global trends and returns from “clean energy”. Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows the decreasing investment and the drop in value of the New Energy index (down to about 40% of pre 2008 crash levels when the general stock indexes had recovered.)
Global investment in renewable energy fell 12 percent in 2013 to $254 billion. This was the second decline in renewable investments since 2011’s record-high $318 billion.
Ceres investments wants another $27 trillion to be invested into clean energy over the next 36 years (to 2050) $100 trillion is expected to be invested into energy over that time.
Al Gore does not think the climate change problems are urgent enough to start building more nuclear power or to make any attempt at geoengineering. It is ok to wait for as long as it takes for clean technology and solar and wind to get ramped up.
The International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2009 report said that investment of US$ 25.6 trillion* would be required by 2030 under the reference scenario, and $10.5 trillion more under an alternative low-carbon energy scenario. Under this, nuclear capacity increases 378 GWe (86%) to 816 GWe rather than to 475 GWe in reference case, energy demand increases by 20% rather than 40% and CO2 emissions reduce to 26.4 Gt/yr from 28.8 Gt/yr in 2007.
It would be possible for nuclear energy to add a lot more clean energy at lower cost. Particularly if China builds a lot of lower cost nuclear energy. China and South Korea have nuclear reactors that are about half to one third of the cost of US and Europe reactors.
* Of the $25.6 trillion amount, $13.7 trillion is for electricity: about half for generation and the rest for transmission and distribution. ” ta
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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