A review on global solar energy policy
Introduction
Energy policy is a strategy in which government decides to address the issues of energy development along with the development of the energy industry to sustain its growth; including energy production, distribution and consumption. The attributes of energy policy may include legislation, international treaties and incentives to investment. It plays a vital role to mitigate the impacts of global warming and crisis of energy availability [1], [2].
Solar energy is one of the cleanest energy resources that does not compromise or add to the global warming. The sun radiates more energy in one second then people have used since beginning of time. Solar energy is often called “alternative energy” to fossil fuel energy sources such as oil and coal.
Availability of cheap and abundant energy with minimum environmental and ecological hazards associated with its production and use is one of the important factors for desired improvement in the quality of life of the people. The growing scarcity of fossil fuels has raised global interest in the harnessing of solar energy [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. Solar power is a type of energy with great future potential-even though at present it covers merely a minor portion of global energy demands (0.05% of the total primary energy supply); at the moment PV power generates less than 1% of total electricity supply. This is due to solar power still being considered the most expensive type of renewable energies. However, in remote regions of the earth it may very well constitute today's best solution for a decentralized energy supply [8], [9]. According to the 2010 BP Statistical Energy Survey, the world cumulative installed solar energy capacity was 22928.9 MW in 2009, a change of 46.9% compared to 2008 [10].
World primary energy demand is projected in the Reference Scenario to expand by almost 60% from 2002 to 2030, an average annual increase of 1.7% per year. Demand will reach 16.5 billion tons of oil equivalents (toe) compared to 10.3 billion toes in 2002 which is shown in Table 1. On the other hand, fossil fuels will continue to dominate global energy use. They will account for around 85% of the increase in world primary demand over 2002–2030. And their share in total demand will increase slightly, from 80% in 2002 to 82% in 2030. The share of renewable energy sources will remain flat, at around 4%, while that of nuclear power will drop from 7% to 5% [11].
Oil will remain the single largest fuel in the global primary energy mix, even though its share will fall marginally, from 36% in 2002 to 35% in 2030. Demand for oil is projected to grow by 1.6% per year, from 77 MBD in 2002 to 90 MBD in 2010 and 121 MBD in 2030 [11].
Solar photovoltaic technology could harness the sun's energy to provide large-scale, domestically secure, and environmentally friendly electricity. In 2005, global solar markets reached US$ 11.8 billion, up 55% on 2004. Solar installations are expected to provide 15 GW in 2010 versus 2.7 GW in 2006. In April 2007, Photon Consulting forecast 2010 revenues from sales of solar energy equipment of US$ 90 billion, up from US$ 20 billion in 2006. Demand for silicon for solar cells is expected to increase from 41,000 tons in 2006 to 120,000 tons in 2010 and 400,000 tons in 2015 [12]. Table 2 shows the expected development and installation of solar photovoltaic electricity in the USA, Europe, Japan as well as worldwide until 2030.
The most common GHG is carbon dioxide (CO2) and two largest global sources of GHG are electricity and heat (32%) and transportation (17%). Service-sector companies’ activities contribute to these sources through their electricity usage, heating, cooling and travelling. They may also contribute to other large global CO2 emission sources such as land use change and forestry (24%) and manufacturing and construction (13%). Table 3 shows environmental impacts of the present energy system. Some degree of global warming is actually vital; otherwise this planet would be too cold to support life. However, the vast tonnage of CO2 gas we have released into the atmosphere seems likely to upset the natural balance. Table 4 also shows world CO2 emissions by region [14], [15], [16], [17].
Solar energy is obviously environmentally advantageous relative to any other energy source, and the linchpin of any serious sustainable development program. It does not deplete natural resources, does not cause CO2 or other gaseous emission into air or generates liquid or solid waste products. Concerning sustainable development, the main direct or indirectly derived advantages of solar energy are the following [18], [19], [20], [21]:
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No emissions of greenhouse (mainly CO2, NOx) or toxic gasses (SO2, particulates);
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Reclamation of degraded land;
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Reduction of transmission lines from electricity grids;
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Improvement of quality of water resources;
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Increase of regional/national energy independence;
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Diversification and security of energy supply;
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Acceleration of rural electrification in developing countries.
As a result of concerns about climate change, increase the energy consumption rate, international agreements to reduce the GHGs emission and thinking about the availability of solar energy governments worldwide are beginning to establish national goals for the provision of electricity from renewable energy and hence try to set-up the various solar energy policies in various countries. In this paper the existing various solar policies are discussed briefly. There are many literatures that discussed mainly about the energy policies of a country. However, in this paper authors discussed and compared energy policies for 9 countries around the world. It is expected that it will be very useful for policy makers, energy producing industries, research organizations and Government for many parts of the world.
Section snippets
Review on solar energy policies for selected countries
A variety of policies like feed-in-tariff (FIT), portfolio standard (RPS), tax credits, pricing laws, production incentives, quota requirements, trading systems etc. have been developed and implemented to promote the use of renewable energy (RE) [22]. These strategies have main objective such as reducing the environmental impacts of the energy sector, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and encouraging new industrial development [23], [24]. Yet the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and the
Conclusion
Solar energy is one of the most promising renewable. It is very consistent and is not significantly vulnerable to changes in seasonal weather patterns. Solar energy can be exploited through the solar thermal and solar photovoltaic (PV) routes for various applications. Power generated by solar energy is not just relatively simpler but is also much more environmental friendly compared to power generation using non-renewable sources like the fossil fuels and coals. Considering that energy usage
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the University of Malaya for funding the project. The research has been carried out under the Project no. RG056/AET09.
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