Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment

Question: Discuss about the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment. Answer: Summary of focus chapter: Renewables and storage The chapter on renewable and storage brings into highlight the need for balancing renewable energy sources and deal with energy storage to deal with demand spikes in renewable energy generation (FS UNEP Centre. 2017). The rise in renewable energy resource has increased due to the changing world dynamics and more focus on investing in renewable energy. With recent technological advancements, the number of creative ways to restore energy has become possible to meet rising energy demands. The improvement in the economics of renewable energy is also creating opportunity for increased investment in renewable energy (Lewis 2014) As there might be variations in wind speed or cloud cover, making up for the demand in renewable energy resource might be difficult. To balance this fluctuation in renewable resource, balancing techniques is required to meet consumptions demand efficiently. National grid system operators is the answer to these issues as they can anticipate extra generations needs based on improved energy forecasting techniques (Castillo and Gayme 2014). There are four ways to balance the generation of renewable energy resource- via conventional generation, interconnectors, demand response strategies and the energy storage. The decision to choose the best method for balancing depends on long-term or short-term needs and costs involved per MWh. Considering several limitation in other three approaches, energy storage is regarded as the best technique to quickly respond to demands (FS UNEP Centre 2017). In order to succeed in energy storage, understanding about current storage landscape is important. Storage has become an exciting field for investors due to cost declines in lithium-ion batteries due to fierce competition among electric vehicle manufacturers. Entrepreneurial efforts to produce lithium-ion batteries are one the rise with about 35GWh production every year by Tesla Motors. Hence investment in storage has increased particularly to improve grid performance, manage demand-supply problems and regulate frequency of renewable resource usage. Further improvement in storage facility has been done by application of behind-the-metre storage to balance small scale industries. Electrification extension has been possible in conjunction with solar mini-grids which have battery storage as well as diesel generators for back-up. Several projects are being planned related to batter storage and increasing capacity f energy storage products. Policy makers are aware of the challenges in balancing renewable and energy storage due to cost issues in spite of several improvements in storage technology. Top companies are investigating the actual cost involved in balancing renewable. It will be necessary to engage in flexible generation by combining interconnectors, demand response, gas-fired power and energy storage (Kousksou et al. 2014). In case of quick balancing needs, the focus will be on renewable energy installation close to the site. Many German companies are also looking into introducing batteries in renewable energy plants to curb the current cost of energy generation. The cost will also depend in duration of battery use and it is predicted that with the cost of batteries is likely to go down in the recent years which will help in balancing efforts (FS UNEP Centre 2017). Reference Castillo, A. and Gayme, D.F., 2014. Grid-scale energy storage applications in renewable energy integration: A survey.Energy Conversion and Management,87, pp.885-894. FS UNEP Centre. 2017.Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2016. [online] Available at: https://fs-unep-centre.org/publications/global-trends-renewable-energy-investment-2016 [Accessed 18 Jan. 2017]. Kousksou, T., Bruel, P., Jamil, A., El Rhafiki, T. and Zeraouli, Y., 2014. Energy storage: Applications and challenges.Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells,120, pp.59-80. Lewis, J.I., 2014. The rise of renewable energy protectionism: Emerging trade conflicts and implications for low carbon development.Global Environmental Politics.