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from the The-answer-is-blowin'-in-the-wind dept.
The International Energy Agency [IEA] says that the world's capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources has now overtaken coal.
The IEA says in a new report that last year, renewables accounted for more than half of the increase in power capacity.
The report says half a million solar panels were installed every day last year around the world. In China, it says, there were two wind turbines set up every hour.
Renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and hydro are seen as a key element in international efforts to combat climate change. At this stage, it is the capacity to generate power that has overtaken coal, rather than the amount of electricity actually produced. Renewables are intermittent - they depend on the sun shining or the wind blowing, for example, unlike coal which can generate electricity 24 hours a day all year round. So renewable technologies inevitably generate a lot less than their capacity.
Even so it is striking development.
The IEA's Executive Director Fatih Birol said "We are witnessing a transformation of global power markets led by renewables".
Link to original BBC story: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37767250
(Score: 3, Funny) by xpda on Thursday October 27 2016, @05:43AM
The sun is emits heat, light, and various and sundry other stuff, and it is NOT renewable. While we will get quite a lot of solar energy when the sun becomes a red giant and expands to a size larger than earth's orbit (5 billion years from last Tuesday), it will eventually burn out and become a white dwarf, rendering roof-top solar panels completely worthless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:03PM
The Sun will keep shining as a white dwarf, then as a red dwarf. When it becomes a black dwarf, a quadrillion years from now, we'll need to run off stored energy. Fortunately, a common AA battery can last a billion years.
(Score: 2) by Sarasani on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:39PM
I should hope that by that time, we'll have figured out a way to simply plug our phones into a black hole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:57PM
Plugging our phones into a black hole is easy - getting them back out intact is somewhat trickier.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 27 2016, @05:49PM
Yes, this is also why global warming doesn't matter. The sentient cockroaches that arise out of the smoldering remains of human civilization will all get supernova-ed in the end, anyway, so why bother.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday October 27 2016, @07:32PM
I'm assuming that you were going for the funny mod (which at this point in time you hold), but since the other posters have ignored this point...
Not turning sun light into electricity doesn't slow down the death of the sun.
This doesn't imply that I think solar is always the best choice (though in many cases it is), but that the rate at which the sun burns is unrelated to the use of solar energy. Of course, if you were serious I'd need to point out that by the laws of thermodynamics there is no renewable energy resource...not over time and in the long run. And were you have been actually meaning that in a serious vein I'd think you were being incredibly nitpicky. Which is what makes the joke work (though without a tone of voice it's a *bit* ambiguous.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.