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With the uncertain oil market & ever fluctuating oil prices in the last 2 decades, the research & development for finding alternative energy resources is paying off in Germany & elsewhere.

Great advances have been made in US, Germany & Japan while India, Brazil & China are catching up. The German efforts to develop alternative energy resources have really paying off well. Today Germany has become one of the major players in the alternative energy battle for reducing dependence on fossil fuels. With big investments in research & development, and implementation of wind turbines, biogas power plants, and solar collection cells, Germans have broken new grounds in wind energy & biofuel run power plants .

Germans have shown the world a new approach in solving the energy problem. The German ‘Feed Laws’ allow the German homeowners to setup small alternative energy plants for their own use & sell the extra energy at retail prices. The home owners can connect to an electrical grid through a source of renewable energy and then sell back to the power company any excess energy produced at retail prices. This economic incentive has created awareness, encouraged innovation & has involved the public power for solving problems. This will definitely healthy signals worldwide for developing renewable energy sources locally and in collaboration with companies that developed the technologies for wind power, solar power, biofuels & other resources.

German approach shows a new approach for utilising the public funds for solving difficult problems by offering incentives. This has made Germany into the number one country with highest operational solar arrays, biogas plants, and wind turbines. The 50-terawatt hours of electricity produced by these renewable energy sources account for more than 10% of all of Germany’s energy production per year. Germany had more than 100,000 solar energy collection systems in 2007 & this is increasing

With government incentives worldwide & lower maintenance costs over a turbine’s 20-year service life, wind energy may cost about 4-5 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s slightly more than coal, but the gap is narrowing & getting competitive all the time.
Isn’t that a good news for environmentalists. The figures are already in favor for Wind energy. Denmark produces 20% of its electricity from wind energy. Denmark companies are also doing a good business in Japan, installing wind turbines.

USA produces 1.2% of it energy from wind energy. At 1.2% USA is the largest wind energy producer and the capacity is increasing with more investments. China is also planning to double its wind energy generation capacity.

This approach & scale of creating renewable resources needs a special attention of everyone involved in green environment projects. Sure enough, it is a matter of time that this approach or its variations will catch up to solve the future energy problems worldwide.

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