Green or renewable energy is the energy that can be generated from the natural sources, such as sun, wind, rain and tides. It can be generated again and again, that’s why it is called renewable. The question of importance of the renewable energy was raised many times by progressive countries. However, the biggest share of the world’s energy still comes of such non-renewable sources of energy as oil, natural gas, coal and fossil fuels.
Non-renewable energy is called like that because it cannot be regenerated (at least in the foreseeable future). Many progressive scientists and public figures have repeatedly expressed concern about the fact that above mentioned sourced of the non-renewable energy may vanish in fifty-sixty years. Despite that, only some countries and only in the last years started to expand the share of the renewable energy in their energy complexes.
What Countries Lead in the Use of the Renewable Energy?
In the last ears many countries started thinking about the renewable energy as the source of the energy independence and as the investment for the future. Thereby, we can see more and more resources allocated for renewable energy per year. Top ten countries that use green energy are (due to the amount of the renewable energy that they produced in the 2015 year in million tons of oil equivalents):
- United States. Their 65 million tons of oil equivalent thermal units came from renewable units in 2015 year. Moreover, this accounts for 22 percent share of all renewable world energy in 2015 year. During the last seven years, the share of renewable energy in the United States has grown from 1,5 percent to more than 5 percent (President Obama’s administration is a great supporters of the green energy’s As statistic says, a new solar plant in 2014 year was installed every two and a half minutes. One of the reasons of such enthusiastic use of green energy is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 year.
- China. Generally, there has been produced green energy of around 53.10 million tons of oil equivalent. Despite the fact that China is second in the list of total production of the green energy, this country takes the first place in the wind energy. There were installed more than 115 GW wind power plants prior to 2015 year. It is almost in two times bigger than in the United States (wind power installed capacity prior 2015 year is around 65 GW). Technology of the wind energy becomes more available and effective year to year, which stimulates its use in different projects over the globe.
- Germany. This country is third by the amount of green energy produced in 2015 year; it produced around 31.70 million tons of oil equivalents from the renewable energy sources. However, Germany left United States and China far behind due to percentage of green energy use in a country. In 2015 Germany was able to produce around 78 percent of their day’s electricity demand by renewable energy sources. For example, the same number for the United States in 2014 year will be only around 13 percent.
- Spain. It was the leader in installing of the solar energy systems in 2008 year, but has significantly dropped its positions in 2010-2014 years. In 2015 this country produced around 16 million tons of oil equivalents from renewable energy sources.
- Brazil. In this country 15.40 million tons of oil equivalent thermal units came from renewable units in 2015 year.
- Italy. 14.80 million tons of oil equivalents came from green sources. It produced around 8 percent of all its energy by solar plants.
- India. With 13.90 million tons of oil equivalent thermal units, which came from renewable units in 2015 year, India is going to get over 25% of all its energy demand from green energy sources.
- United Kingdom. 13.20 million tons of oil equivalents. In 2015 year in UK was 300 percent growth of electric cars sales.
- Japan. This country has more electric charging stations than gas stations and produced around 11.60 million tons of oil equivalent from renewable sources.
- France. 6.50 million tons of oil equivalent thermal units came from renewable units in 2015 year. Its well-designed FiT for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) has a great impact on a green energy development in a country. However, EPIA (European Photovoltaic Industry Association) talks about the lack of the political support and attacks from the nuclear and fossil fuel energy. Nuclear energy still has plenty supporters, because it gives attractive jobs to people interested in engineering and mathematics.
Which countries have the biggest percentage of the green energy use?
The above given list is effective to understand which countries form the biggest world green energy share. However, the list of the countries that have the biggest percentage of the green energy use will be very different. Here are top three countries due to the percentage of renewable energy use:
- Denmark – this country is able to generate over 140 percent of its electricity demand from wind turbines (it is 39.1 percent of all electricity that country generates)
- Germany – around 26 percent of country’s power generation comes from green energy sources
- The United Kingdom – its standalone turbines and grid-connected wind farms produce around 10 percent of country’s electricity demand. However, in Scotland, over 98 percent of households’ energy needs are satisfied by wind turbines.
The success of the green energy in the last five years gives hope for a clean future. More and more countries start financing the renewable energy. It is a kind of a race for the biggest renewable energy use nowadays; it is a race where everybody wins. For example, Sweden has set a goal to get 100 percent of the country’s energy need from green sources.
The same goal has many small countries as Costa Rica. Kenya makes more than a half country’s energy from geothermal energy; Denmark is going to be fossil-fuel free; Uruguay is already 95 percent renewable energy country – can you see a good trend here too? Such activity represents the changes that occur in the world energy system nowadays. These changes give hope and faith in a clean future for our kids.
About the Author:
Julie Martin is a writer, blogger and Student from California University. She is a green activist and spends her evenings on reading and testing different methods of effective way to save and protect environment. In free time Julie writes for mathematical blog. You can follow her on Facebook and Google+ for more tips.
