Those are big topics but if you shift the focus back to world energy consumption you will quickly realise that renewables, apart from hydro, are just bit players in energy. A glance at any of the consumption figures for oil, natural gas and coal show that the rate of growth has barely slowed. This is because various countries such as China and India - two of the three top emitters - are still building coal fired power plants. India has shown no interest in green rhetoric, while China pays lip service.
Go and look at the article on China quoted by Rob Plant. The first one. This is typical of the misinformation in this sector - although the article, to its credit, admits that the country's emissions have increased. Note that it talks about installed capacity of renewables. To get an idea of the effective output of wind farms you have to discount the installed capacity by two thirds (wind comes and goes). For solar you discount by 80 per cent (only work in daylight and then only at top capacity during noon on a cloudless day). Now look at the figure for more than 70 power cent of power still coming from fossil fuels. If you add in the power from hydro of which there is a lot in China (three Gorges dam and many others), not much at all is coming from wind and solar. This share might be increasing but remember that China's demand for power is also increasing fast. No wonder they're building more coal plants.
The US has switched mostly from coal to gas for power production, thanks to fracking, but mostly renewables are being adopted by hard-line democrat states who are paying the price. A handful of advanced countries have also tried aggressive adoption of such technologies, the two largest being the UK and Germany. Both have very high power prices as a result and Germany is deindustrialising, although for the later that is in part due to a lunatic decision to also abandon its nuclear power plants.
Despite all the advances referred to by Rob Plant, renewables cannot provide a stable power supply, and that is proving a huge problem for the sector. In fact it is insurmountable.
There is much more to say but time for me to move on. For some of the debate I refer you to David Blackmon's blog. Its actually subscription but some parts are free. Hope that helps.
