Google Invests $80 Million to Open 6 Solar Energy Plants

        Google is investing $80 million in 6 new solar plants in California and Arizona that the company says will provide enough electricity for 17,000 homes in the United States. The investment is Google's 14th in renewable energy. The company has so far put more than $1 billion behind solar and wind projects since April 2010. Google is partnering with investment firm KKR for the venture; the lead developer is Recurrent Energy.
       According to a Google blog post, the projects have a combined capacity of 106 megawatts. A typical coal power station produces 600-700 megawatts while a nuclear power plant puts out 900-1,300 megawatts. Google currently gets 33% of its energy from renewable sources, but hopes to be 100% reneawble at some point.

India + Renewable Energy = Positive Consequences

     India is growing in its expanding its clean energy opportunities, specifically solar, wind and other renewable energy projects, throughout India. In the last month, the Indian government had announced a $7.9 billion investment is to double its transmission capacity, which was designed to increase access to power from wind and solar projects. For instance, India's installed solar energy capacity has jumped from a mere 17 megawatts in 2010, when India's National Solar Mission was announced, to over 1.7 megawatts. Not only do these renewable energy projects increase India's energy supply, but they also help create much needed jobs.

Grid-connected concentrated solar power project under construction in India

 
     The Indian government and businesses around the country are making significant investments in renewable resources. The investment in transmission capacity and the next phase of the National Solar Mission are example policies to drive clean energy development. The motivations for these investments, in part, are to continue to power India's rapid economic growth and increase energy access by providing modern electricity to the nearly 400 million population in India without access to modern electricity.

Bill Clinton visits Puerto Rico to Promote Renewable Energy

Former President Bill Clinton looks out over his eyeglasses during a forum on renewable energy in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Tuesday, July 16, 2013

       Former President Bill Clinton urges Puerto Rico to lessen its oil dependence and to pursue clean energy alternatives by developing a renewable energy strategy. He notes that the island has the resources necessary to launch various clean energy projects that would also help drive down power bills, which are about twice that of the United States' bills on average. 

        Clinton has also advised during a forum on Tuesday in the United States that the government should also consider manufacturing solar panels and installing them on buildings (given the number of flat roofs that exist across Puerto Rico). Puerto Rico depends on petroleum to generate nearly 70% of its power, but the government recently has provided renewable energy projects to help drive down the costs of bills and reduce greenhouse emissions.  

Oil-Rich Russia Works to Increase Renewable Energy

     The Energy Ministry of Russia has recently submitted a draft law to Dmitry Medvedev, prime minister of Russia, which is intended to support the deployment of renewable energy sources, such as solar power, wind power, and hydroelectric power. Russia, however, has failed to meet its renewable energy set goal for 2010, in which it was to obtain 1.5% of the country's electric demand from renewable power plants. In 2011, Russia even failed to reach yet 1%.
      Currently there has been no details concerning tariffs for specific technologies, but notably the new law promises a 14% return on investment. In addition, the electricity is said to be bought through power purchase agreements. If approved, this project would cost an amount of 85 billion rubles (approximately $2,716,396,000). This, in turn, is shown to the public as an incentive scheme that will prioritize projects that are in line with a local content requirement.
      Russia, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the few of the largest petroleum exporters throughout the globe. They are each ones of the top 8 petroleum producers yet they acknowledge the environmental consequences of using petroleum, especially UAE whereas the nation aggressively pursues solar and wind energy. The possible reasons for why these petroleum-dependent nations are pursuing renewable energy is as follows: the consequences of climate change, air and water pollution are severe; and the less oil nations consume may lead to more demand in exports causing there to be an increase in foreign exchange revenue and massive petroleum-derived profits.
      This new plan's target goal is for Russia to obtain 2-2.5% of its electricity from renewable energy sources, or 6 gigawatts of installed capacity by 2020. It has also been claimed that the draft law has supposedly been approved by Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev on April 25, 2013, but there has been no information regarding this announcement in the English media as of yet.

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

Uruguay Plans Cheap Solar Energy!

       The South American nation, Uruguay, is offering contracts to buy power equivalent to 200 megawatts of solar farms at the world's cheapest rates. Ramon Mendez, a director of energy at the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, has remarked that President Jose Mujica is planning to sign a decree that will require Uruguay's national power utility to purchase electricity from projects at a set rate of $90 a megawatt hour. The nation plans to produce some of the world's cheapest energy, referring mostly to solar and wind energy projects.
         China is offering Uruguay $160 a megawatt hour while Germany offers $154.33 a megawatt hour. Four months after the decree is passed, developers have the opportunity of proposing offers at a first-come first-serve basis. Mendez recalls that three companies have already proclaimed in selling at the price of $90 a megawatt hour. However, if the offers fail, they will plan to wait another couple of years until the equipment prices drop and they will try again.
        The decree that is to be issued also calls for a bid of developing a 1-megawatt and a 5-megawatt plant. Both these projects are to provide the national power utility power for 25 years at a price. Though this decree is currently in circulation, 80% of the nation's electricity is derived from hydroelectric power plants, costing on average $80 a megawatt hour. In a 2011 auction, Uruguay was offered a contract of  power at $63 a megawatt hour from wind developers. This nation has many projects in development to sustain their population as a low-cost nation.

Investments towards renewable energy

      European investors in the next five years are withdrawing their finances from the construction of facilities generating fossil fuels and inserting them into better use: development of renewable energy sources, known as the RES. These claims were made from representatives from gas companies surved by the British-based Gas Strategies Group at the European Autumn Gas Conference, known as EAGC 2012.
        According to this survey, it was claimed that 42% of gas industry representatives believed that the whole share of investments would go to the wind power sector, 28% believed it would be towards the solar power industry, 13% thought it to be the coal-fired industry,  11% to the gas industry and 7% to the nuclear power industry.
       From last year, it seemed that opinions have indeed changed dramatically: support of solar energy has grew from 4% to 28%, coal-fired industry has grew from 2% to 13%, nuclear energy from 5% to 7%, wind power sector from 52% to 42%, and lastly but not least the gas industry from 37% to 11%.
       There have been reports in the Bloomberg New Energy Finance, that global investment in renewable energy development in 2012 was $268.7 billion, whereas there was $142 billion in investments towards solar power energy as well as the remaining $78.3 billion in the wind power sector.

      Ukraine has also been increasing their involvement in renewable energy. At the beginning of this new year, the total number of companies operating power plants, derived from renewable energy sources has increased to 80, and the number of the power plants has increased to 133, in which 39 are used for solar power energy.
     Ukraine actually has what is known to be the largest power plant in Europe.

Once construction is completed in 2015, this solar power farm is said to be equivalent to 207 football fields. It is expected to produce 100,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year, meaning it can be enough to power 20,000 average-sized households.
Even today, Ukraine ranks 12th in energy rankings with installed renewable energy capacity of 54 GW.