A new study has suggested that power companies are too slow in transitioning to green energy in order to mitigate climate change. Sources of green energy include solar and wind power.
The study has found that only ten percent of power suppliers all over the world have prioritized the use of renewable energy over more commonly used fossil fuel sources.
Those who are investing in cleaner energy themselves still continue to invest in natural gas as well as coal, both of which are carbon-heavy.
A new study has suggested that power companies are too slow in utilizing and transitioning to green energy in order to mitigate climate change. Sources of green energy include solar and wind power.
According to the study author, the unwillingness to shift towards cleaner energy sources undercuts environmental efforts worldwide to mitigate and reduce global warming.
In Europe, nations such as the United Kingdom already utilize clean energy to such an extent that it has a substantial share of the market in power. For example, in the U.K. in 2019, 40 percent of its power was sourced from solar and wind energy.
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Government-Owned Providers Need to Move Faster
The author of the study is Galina Alova, an economist, data scientist, ex-OECD, and Ph.D. candidate in Energy and Sustainable Finance at the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise & the Environment.
According to the results of the study published in the journal Nature Energy, even if the use of green energy already recently significantly increased worldwide, majority of the new power infrastructure for solar and wind were due to the efforts of independent suppliers.
However, companies that produce electricity on a major scale, such as many of the city-owned and state-owned power providers, have not yet made any significant shift towards green energy.
The study examined over 3,000 electric utility companies all over the world and analyzed two decades of their activity with the use of techniques of machine learning. The results showed that a mere ten percent of these business entities ventured into expanding their power generation portfolios into renewables in a manner that is quicker than their investments and expansion for coal or gas.
Out of the ten percent, many still continued to care for their investments in fossil fuel sources, even at a slower pace. Meanwhile, Alova says that the vast majority of power suppliers have not done anything to advance clean energy. A lot of these utilities are owned by the government.
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A Lot of Facilities Still Use Fossil Fuels
Alova's conclusion and analysis show that power companies are actually encumbering the worldwide effort to shift to cleaner energy. She says that they continue to grow and improve their capacity for using fossil fuels in their operations.
She also found that a considerable portion of their capacity for fossil fuels were only acquired in the past ten years, which means that these are actually new assets.
The author also says that these power companies use both fossil fuels and clean energy simultaneously, so that when the media reports on their profile and activities, they project an image that these companies are significantly investing in clean energy. Meanwhile, their continued investments in fossil fuels go undetected.
Alova says that such parallel investments by these power companies dilute their shift to green energy, which does little to mitigate climate change.
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