Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury : During 2013, more than £150billion has been invested in renewable energy schemes around the world. Wind, solar and other renewables now produce 22% of the world’s electricity and could be producing 26% by 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported last week. The cost of production of renewable technologies is falling as manufacturing costs reduce but investors need to know that they will get a return on their money. All energy production is subsidised by governments and the present economic climate has caused the subsidisation of renewable energy to be criticised widely although this is an extremely short sighted approach.
Our ‘greenest government ever’ has chosen to invest in wind power, mostly offshore wind, but this is an example of putting all our eggs in one basket which never makes for a good result. Offshore wind is an expensive option because of high installation costs and onshore wind has many opponents, despite being the most economic way here in Britain. Power generation is a big subject and power generation by renewable technologies is also controversial. If we are to have reliable sources of energy for the future, low-carbon world which we need to create we must have a mix of technologies to take advantage of all the sources of energy that are out there. Wind blows more at night but solar energy is there during the day so a combination of the two is the obvious choice with bio-fuel, hydro, geothermal technologies and anaerobic digestion alongside.
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