Wind and Solar Power Vs Fossil Fuels

When talking about different renewable energy sources people usually talk about wind power and solar power though there are some other clean energy sources such as geothermal power, biomass, hydropower, tidal and wave power.

The Sun and the wind are two abundant renewable energy resources that could with their enormous potential supply our current energy needs more than 1000 times. But yet, despite their recent increase in popularity these energy sources are still not developed enough to put a decent challenge to fossil fuel industry on global scale, and by the current looks of it they will need at least few decades more to compete with coal, oil, and natural gas, especially the solar power.

Wind power industry has managed to decrease costs very close to fossil fuel industry but solar industry will need lot more development and research to follow the same path because solar panels and all other solar power technologies are still fairly expensive, mostly because they need rare, expensive materials for their production, such as silicon.

The costs still remain high as said above but at least we are seeing the trend of decline in prices which could eventually lead to better cost-competitiveness of these sources.

When it comes to clean energy technologies then no country in the world is equal to China that has recently become world's largest manufacturer of solar panels as well as wind turbines, with other countries like United States and United Kingdom trailing heavy behind.

Of course, all these countries still heavy depend on fossil fuels to satisfy their energy demand but they all look to be more than willing to challenge China in clean energy race.