Renewable Energy Trends for 2021

The demand for renewable energy has continued to increase through 2020, in spite of the global pandemic and the resulting downturn of the economy. The stimulus bills ignored renewables, but companies and states continue their commitment to clean energy to achieve net zero carbon and to combat climate change.

A new administration taking office in January is committed to renewable energy, re-joining the Paris climate accord and decarbonizing America by 2050. This all points to the resilience and viability of the various renewable energy industries moving into the future.

The fact that renewables also create good jobs that pay living wages all over the country will be welcome news for the economic recovery and for the currently unemployed population.

Deloitte has published their 2021 Renewable Energy Industry Outlook and it outlines 5 trends that could propel collaboration that will give rise to new business models and help advance the energy transition.

1. The competitive landscape is moving towards consolidation. Renewable energy deal making will likely rise in 2021. Utilities and other energy providers are interested in renewables because of rising demand and economic competitiveness, among other reasons.
2. An emerging hydrogen economy is expanding the clean energy infrastructure. Some industry stakeholders are turning to hydrogen production and storage in addition to wind and solar to find ways to cut emissions.
3. Business models for batteries are emerging for utilities and residential. Energy storage is a fast growing asset class due to falling costs and the maturing of the technology. Pairing storage with solar energy offers significant value, and about a third of storage projects planned for 2021 are solar-plus-storage installations.
4. Wind energy is moving offshore. Wind has been resilient during the pandemic, and a new administration can smooth things for future installations by streamlining the permit process requiring multiple local, state and federal signoffs.
5. Disaster readiness for supply chains will be a priority.  Supply chains will be diversified to build resilience, including bringing some manufacturing of key materials into the United States. In addition, digital technologies will be utilized in such areas as asset tracking and predictive maintenance and provide analytics to better understand potential supply chain disruptions.

Renewable energy is going to continue growing. It is a prime tactic in the climate change battle, and it will be a key driver of economic recovery post pandemic. With the new technologies such as hydrogen and storage coming into its own, jobs will be created at all levels in multiple industries.