Obama's Climate Action Plan: Domestic Renewable Energy

In his augural speech, Obama had announced he would double the production of renewable energy in the United States in the next three years

         Last week, President Obama had presented his Climate Action Plan. The goals for the plan are as follows: to reduce greenhouse emissions, especially carbon; to prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change; and to lead international efforts to prevent global warming. Renewable energy is the key component to the plan, whereas the growth of clean energy sources are steadily increasing.
        President Obama had expressed his enthusiasm in his speech that "over the past four years, we've doubled the electricity that we generate from zero-carbon wind and solar power." He continued, "jobs installing the solar panels that now generate more than four times the power at less cost than just a few years ago." Wind has also shown exponential growth over the years: "jobs manufacturing the wind turbines that now generate enough electricity to power nearly 15 million homes." Moreover, "75% of all wind energy in the country is generated in Republican districts."
        Tom Kieran, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, had praised President Obama's climate speech, stating "We welcome the President's initiative to proceed with climate actions focused at this time on executive agencies." "American workers," he added, "make nearly 70% of the equipment deployed here and wind power is more affordable than ever, protecting electric consumers with 25-year contracts and no risk of fuel price shocks."

Japan and Taiwan: Growing with Clean Energy

        Japan has continuously thrived towards solar energy and other renewable energy sources (as well as being a nation of energy storage), after an earthquake occurred in destroying Fukushima, a nuclear power plant, in March 2011. The government had put in place generous amounts of subsidies for alternative energy development. Both IHS and Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that Japan will be growing extensively towards solar energy than any other country, with the exception of China, in 2013.
        The natural disaster affecting the destruction of Fukushima has also triggered Taiwan to re-evaluate its nuclear power policy and has stirred protests against the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant, which is nearing its completion.
        Taiwan is also subsidizing clean energy and is planning to increase solar and wind energy development. Late last year, the government had raised the 2013 target for new solar energy by 30% to 130 megawatts. Not only this but Taiwan is actually home to major solar cell makers. By promoting more production of solar energy, this would help Taiwan's domestic solar manufacturers, who have been lately devastated by an oversupply of solar cells in the global market over the past two years. This, in turn, has caused prices to crash and forced many solar manufacturers to go out of business.
        However, one of the largest Taiwanese solar cell makers, Neo Solar Power, recently had announced a survival plan to merge with another Taiwanese solar cell maker, DelSolar. Neo Solar had claimed that the combined company will have "close to 2 gigawatts" of production capacity, which would be comparable to First Solar Inc.'s capacity of 1.9 gigawatts.

Miaoli, Taiwan