More than $2.7 trillion has been invested in building up global renewable energy capacity over the past decade.[1] In those same 10 years, renewable electricity sources more than doubled their share of the global power mix, from 5.9% in 2009 to 13.4% in 2019.
In just one decade, solar and wind equipment manufacturing scale economies, plus innovations in project finance, engineering and construction, have empowered game-changing reductions in renewable electricity costs. In the same decade, on-site solar electricity production and local conversion of organic waste to bio-methane have become locally actionable measures to shrink local carbon footprints.
Local renewable energy transitions strengthen local economies. When benefits are better understood and more widely appreciated, local governments will see compelling reasons to take a more active and supportive role.
In the wake of global renewable industry scale-up and maturation that occurred after California’s pioneering wind and solar deployment in the late 1980s, California’s renewable energy transition re-started a decade ago.[2] While the U.S. renewable energy transition relies primarily on centralized renewable projects, California’s transition depends as much on projects located on energy user property as on power plant projects in the sunniest parts of the state.
Robust transition strategies respond to concerns that the global renewable energy transition is proceeding too slowly to limit climate change before a tipping point is reached. In California, as much money is being invested in locally beneficial solar projects as in large solar projects that export electricity to other areas. Balanced investment in local and centralized projects doubles the rate of GHG emissions reduction by doubling the rate of renewable energy deployment.
Local renewable energy production is becoming the foundation for local energy resilience. A balanced investment strategy is required to exploit synergies between gas fuel and electricity. While renewable electricity bends GHG emissions curves downward, additional downward pressure is added as zero and negative carbon fuel supplies come on stream and renewable hydrogen gains traction as a future transportation fuel and energy storage medium.
[1] Ref: Solar and wind power growth
[2] California’s initial renewable power deployment aborted in the early 1990s as California regulators restructured California’s electricity systems to expand natural gas generation. Since 2001, while California’s population and economy expanded, new natural gas and renewable power plants helped reduce GHG emissions from California’s in-state electricity generation by about a third, to nine percent of total state-wide emissions in 2017.