Workers on a solar farm site. PHOTO/COURTESY
By ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
newsdesk@reporter.co.ke
The way to stop global warming is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and to embrace sustainable energy. Thankfully, many countries are converting their energy to solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other clean energies. As this trend continues we can halt the damage that greenhouse gas emissions are causing. Further, we may be able to reverse global warming with carbon capture methods that converts CO2 into stone or baking soda.
According to Ladythinker, an interesting clean energy success story occurred last year in Germany. Customers were briefly paid to use energy because renewable sources produced more energy than the country needed.
Countries suffering from a great deal of pollution can reduce and hopefully eliminate their pollution by switching to sustainable energy. In January, China committed to investing 360 billion dollars in renewable energy by 2020.
In 2015, the Climate Realty Project named the top ten countries leading solar power and wind power production.
The top solar countries:
- Germany
- China
- Japan
- Italy
- United States
- France
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- India
The top wind power countries:
- China
- United States
- Germany
- Spain
- India
- United Kingdom
- Canada
- France
- Italy
- Brazil
A solar farm. PHOTO/PIXABAY
Some statistics from the Climate Reality Project illustrate how investments in clean energy spawn drastic results relatively quickly. Below is a list of 2015 statistics and how close they have come to being realized nearly two years later.
- Sweden is poised to reach 100% renewable energy by 2040.
- Costa Rica used 99% sustainable energy in 2015, but had to update its goal to be carbon neutral by 2021 to the year 2085.
- Nicaragua is generating 54% of their power with clean energy. Their objective is 90% by 2020.
- Scotland’s wind-generated electricity produced enough to power 162% of Scottish households several times already in 2017.
- Germany, the solar power champion, generated 78% of their energy needs from the sun in 2015.
- Uruguay produced 95% of their energy with the sun after installing solar power.
- Denmark used wind power to produce 42% of its electricity in 2015 and as much as 45% in 2016.
- China invested in wind and solar power in 2016 and quickly became the wind power leader and attained second place in solar power production.
- Morocco built a gigantic solar plant and also constructed wind power and hydropower facilities. It plans to achieve using 50% of sustainable energy by 2020.
- Kenya is using geothermal energy (harnessing heat in the earth) and increasing their hydropower to use 71% clean energy.
- The U.S. continues moving toward eliminating dirty energy. In 2014, solar energy equipment was installed every two and a half minutes in the United States. The United States’ sustainable energy usage was only 13% of all energy produced in 2015 because we use a great deal of power. However, in 2016, the U.S. produced 16.9% of energy from renewable sources.
Many nations are reducing and working toward eradicating fossil fuel use by utilizing more sustainable energy production methods. Sustainability ensues after the governments invest in the equipment. The increase in clean energy is great news for planet earth and her inhabitants.
