In the last several years American corporations like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and General Motors (NYSE: GM) have become interested in the development of renewable energy. The green energy industry is growing rapidly, and costs are going down thanks to technological advances and developments in solar panels and wind turbines. Tax breaks have created favorable conditions for this growth, and the largest players in green energy still have much to gain. Texas, land of oil wells, might just be the site of a future green revolution.
In 2015 General Motors signed a contract with EDP Renewables North America to build a wind farm to power a car assembly plant in Arlington, Texas, where they produce Chevrolet Tahoes, Cadillac Escalades, and GMS Yukons. They moved 600 employees from Mexico to Arlington to help run the complex. Using renewable energy is saving GM $5 million a year globally, and the company plans to go completely green by 2050.
Texas is emerging as a possible leader in the development of green technology as it has the right atmospheric conditions for wind farms: the different in temperature between land and water creates convection currents. Texas is a pioneer in wind energy and also in having an independent energy network. 36,000 Texans are employed in the solar and wind energy fields. Last year, 15% of the energy used by ERCOT (the supply network for 24 million Texans) was wind energy. Renewable energy made up 59% of the total energy delivered to residents, well about the national average of 49%. Over the next several years Texas will need much more energy, and as demand grows, so will the development of greener supply.
However, green energy is threatened by the tenure of U.S. President Donald Trump, who in June declared that the U.S. was backing out of the Paris Climate Accord, which determines the political policy for fighting climate change and reducing greenhouse gases. Trump's policies don't include tax breaks for renewable energy use. But regardless of the politics of "going green" or not, the race toward renewables continues: over the past four years, U.S. corporations have signed contracts to produce over 7 gigawatts of renewable energy. That's enough to power a million homes. Jobs are also up. In the last year jobs in solar energy have gone up 25%, and 32% in wind energy. There were 475,000 jobs in those industries, three times more than in coal. This is why renewables are becoming a priority for so many companies.
According to the Edison Foundation Institute for Electric Innovation, global renewable energy production will increase to 60 GW by 2025. In 2016, the infrastructure for renewables was able to generate 139 GW of renewable energy, 8% more than just a year earlier. Global trends point to increased development. According to the Bloomberg New Energy Finance research institute, by 2040 there will be $7.2 trillion invested in renewables, and a decline in coal output of 87%. By then, one-third of the world's energy will come from wind, solar, and other sources, and no one will doubt their ecological, and financial, import.