Renewable energy industry future outlook

Renewable energy industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world and renewable energy sources such as solar and wind have become very hot topic these days due to several different factors such as climate change issue, volatile oil prices and peak oil, and the questions of future nation's energy security and energy independence.

Solar and wind energy industry are rapidly growing in many countries all over the world but even despite this significant growth, overall speaking, renewable energy is still nowhere near being able to replace fossil fuels.

There are plenty reasons why fossil fuels still have edge over renewable energy and the most important ones are prices and tradition.

Renewable energy technologies will no doubt need certain time to mature in order to compete with fossil fuels. When I say certain time, I mean at least few decades. It is very difficult to give an exact answer to question whether the current condition with renewable energy development is acceptable or not.

The global renewable energy capacity continues to grow but somehow you got the feeling that the transition to renewable energy sources should be happening lot quicker. Yes, the growth of renewable energy capacity should have been bigger but at least we are talking about very positive trend in the last ten years, in all fronts, namely prices, efficiency and capacity.

Renewable energy technologies are constantly moving forward becoming more efficient and cost-competitive. For instance, take solar panels. In the last three years solar panels have experienced decline in prices by 70 %.

However, a lot more research will be needed before renewable energy sources will achieve total cost parity with fossil fuels.

There are some other issues that renewable energy industry has to find solutions for, like for instance to solve intermittency of solar and wind in order to ensure reliability in supply in times when Sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow.

Future certainly looks bright for renewable energy. Investments in renewable energy are steadily rising as well as government's funding, many companies are turning to different renewable energy technologies and the public support for renewable energy is constantly growing because of the climate change issue.

 People have become much more interested in renewable energy. One of the main reasons for this is definitely the ongoing climate change issue, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

By switching to solar panels, wind turbines or any other form of renewable energy each and every one of us can do something to not only help our environment but also to ensure the future well-being of our children. The more renewable energy we use the less fossil fuels we need to burn, and less burning of fossil fuels means fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore lesser climate change impact.