The United Nations and Bloomberg New Energy Finance recently published a report covering global trends in the renewable energy space for 2017.
Here are some of their key findings:
- 2016 was a record year in terms of renewable power capacity installed worldwide. This includes wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-energy, geothermal, small hydro, and marine sources.
- The share of global electricity generated from renewable sources rose from 10.3% (2015) to 11.3% (2016).
- However, overall investment in renewables declined in 2016 for two main reasons. Costs went down (good news). And China and Japan exhibited a dramatic slowdown in terms of investment activity (bad news).
- Acquisitions of renewal assets, such as wind farms and solar parks, hit a new peak at $72.7 billion.
- A number of promising new pricing records set in 2016: $29.10 per MWh for solar in Chile and $30 per MWh for onshore wind in Morocco.
- In one year, the cost of solar generation dropped on average about 17% and onshore wind dropped about 18%.
Airbnb is a platform that connects people who have extra space with people who need space. It’s a peer-to-peer hospitality company.
Yeloha, which is a startup I just discovered today, is a peer-to-peer solar company based out of Boston.
In the same vein as Airbnb, it connect people who have extra roof space (that’s suitable for solar collection) with people who want to buy solar energy (but may not have a solar friendly roof).
Here’s an image from their website that explains how it works:
Basically, if you have a solar friendly roof, Yeloha will come and install solar panels on top of your place for free. You get to keep some of the energy that’s generated (about 1/3 apparently) which becomes a credit to your electricity bill. You are then known as a “Sun Host.”
The remaining energy gets fed back into the grid and, if you don’t have a solar friendly roof, you can purchase this excess energy, which also results in a credit to your electricity bill. The solar electricity is less expensive than the regular grid electricity. In this case, you are known as a “Sun Partner.”
I think this is a pretty neat idea. Neither party has to pay anything upfront. Both parties save money. And the result is more solar through a distributed and virtual net metering setup.