The growth of renewable energy may accelerate the decline of fossil fuels
In 2019, the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil for power generation in the United States, the European Union and India declined, while total power generation price of solar batteries increased. This was a turning point in the global energy structure.
These countries and regions are three of the world's four largest fossil fuel power generation sites. Thomas Kaberg, an energy professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, who provided Reuters with electricity generation data, said this decline indicates that the end of the fossil fuel era may be coming.
Kaberg is also the chairman of the executive board of the Japanese Renewable Energy Research Institute and a member of the board of the Swedish utility company Vattenfall AB. The data he provided covers more than 70% of the world's power generation, which shows the power generation for most of 2019 Energy from fossil fuels dropped by 156 TWh from the previous year. This is equivalent to the total electricity output of Argentina in 2018.
The data also showed that the growth rate of renewable energy power generation exceeded the growth rate of total power generation for the first time, from 233 TWh of total power generation to 297 TWh.
Kaberg said: "Low-cost renewable energy power has won the competition with fossil energy and nuclear power plants, driving this trend."
He said that as the use of electric vehicles soars and renewable electricity supplies increasingly charge batteries, the decline of fossil fuels may accelerate.
Kaberg said: "The unit energy cost of new renewable energy power generation is even lower than that of petroleum, and even the fuel produced by power generation will exceed fossil fuels at an ever faster rate in transportation, heating and industry."
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