BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

When Will Renewables Become The Dominant Source Of Energy? It May Be Sooner Than You Think

Following
This article is more than 6 years old.

As the amount of renewable energy in global electricity networks continues to surge, a new question arises – when will renewables become the dominant source of energy?

A new report, the Lloyd’s Register 2018 Technology Radar, examines this issue and also looks at which technologies are likely to have the biggest impact in different countries and what are the key drivers and barriers to success.

A survey of 800 key industry figures found that China would be the first country to achieve grid parity, in 2022, followed by Spain and the United Arab Emirates two years later in 2024. This is the same year that Germany and the UK are expected to see grid parity for wind power, followed a year later by Denmark and the USA. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said recently that clean energy sources will be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020.

Although a tenth of respondents said that renewables have already overtaken fossil fuels in their country, or will do so in the next two years, more than half (58%) believe that renewables will not be cost-competitive with conventional electricity generation until after 2025.

And while the cost of building utility-scale solar facilities has more than halved in the last decade, some 62% of respondents told the engineering and technology consultancy that the high cost of renewables was still the main barrier to expanding clean energy capacity.

In addition, while in many places onshore wind is already the cheapest form of energy, more than 45% of respondents said that opposition to onshore wind turbines in their countries was too strong to allow the sector to grow significantly. In Europe, 55% offered this view, even though in the UK, for example, support for onshore wind regularly tops 70% in surveys on the issue.

There was strong agreement in the report (71% of those questioned) that the business case for renewables will be boosted more by technological advances in the next five years than by policy or regulatory changes . Indeed, more than a third of those surveyed said that policy inconsistency is one of the biggest barriers to the sector’s growth. Demand-side technologies such as advanced metering infrastructure, demand response management (DRM) systems, networked sensors and accurate asset monitoring data to are among the technologies that are expected to bring the biggest improvements in performance.

Digitization will also drive performance improvement, with companies looking to use predictive analytics, demand management and even machine learning to improve the operational performance and economics of energy transmission.  There is also a need for more standardization. "In newer renewable energy technologies, such as wave and tidal, experts believe that significant improvements in economics await industry convergence around the design of key technologies," the report says.

However, 37% of respondents said that the biggest factor holding back renewable energy is the slow development of storage technologies, such as batteries and hydrogen. “Utilities need to be able to call on energy producers for additional power whenever it is required, whether for load balancing or meeting surges. Green hydrogen provides an alternative form of storage to electrochemical batteries as hydrogen fuel cells can store power for considerably longer,” said Alasdair Buchanan, director of LR’s Energy business.

There was also considerable support for the view that grid parity will not, on its own, be sufficient to lift investment in renewable technologies, with subsidies seen as still being critical to supporting growth in most markets.

One impact of the advance of renewables is that oil majors such as BP, Total and Shell - even ExxonMobil - have started to take the sector much more seriously, in some cases returning to sectors, such as solar and wind, that they abandoned when, at a time of record high oil and gas prices, technology costs failed to fall as quickly as anticipated, in part because of the lack of a meaningful carbon price.

Such a price would boost investment in the sector significantly, said Karl Ove Ingebrigtsen, director of LR's Low Carbon Power Generation business. “For oil and gas producers a standardized carbon price scheme for emissions provides a financial incentive to seek solutions through efficiency and innovation in lower carbon technologies.

“We are seeing a real shift in thinking by the oil and gas majors as they increase their renewable energy portfolio and diversify their offering in the market. The halcyon days of high oil prices scuppering renewable energy growth and development is a distant memory; the energy industry is on a new low-carbon growth and efficiency drive which will change the source of our energy supply forever, ” says Ingebrigsten.