The world is rapidly turning to renewable energy and it’s going to see communities empowered. In the UK, renewables produce more than 20 percent of the UK’s electricity, and EU targets mean that this is likely to increase to 30 percent by 2020.
Gone are the days where the conventional energy landscape merely consisted of few large power plants. The new energy landscape will be centered around people.
Communities, neighborhoods, cities, and states will instead benefit from the rise of ‘prosumers’ who will produce green energy (like solar power) for themselves and sell excess power directly to their neighbors at an affordable cost.
Currently, around 1.1 billion people live without access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
There is both a moral demand and an economic sense of urgency to ensure there is universal access to electricity, and the unlocking of renewable energy sources provides a solution that is both cost-effective and climate-neutral.
Not only are we going to see the rise of the prosumer, we’re going to see local energy microgrids which are able to operate autonomously from the national grid become a thing of their own, while the advancement of machine learning and blockchain technology emerge to benefit global energy inclusion.
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