By Greentech Lead America: According to a new report from
NRDC, United States still lags far behind Europe and Indonesia and is only
slightly ahead of Mexico in the percentage of electricity it gets from
renewable sources. Indonesia is ahead of Asian countries with 5.7 percent
electricity production in 2011 from renewable energy.
Some smaller, non-G-20 countries such as Spain, New
Zealand and Iceland get more than 15 percent of their energy from renewable
sources. Spain has produced 17.1 percent of electricity from renewable sources
in 2011.
European countries, led by Germany, get more of their
electricity from wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable
sources than any other region in the world, according to
NRDC’s global renewable energy scorecard. Germany got 10.7 percent electricity
from renewable sources in 2011. The United States got about 2.7 percent of its
electricity from renewable in 2011, making it No. 7 among G-20 member
countries.
Favorable governmental policies and strong private-sector
investments have helped to increase the availability of renewable energy in the
United States and elsewhere.
“Unfortunately, the very policies that have
increased our renewable energy supplies and reduced our dependence on dirty
fossil fuels are now under fire in the United States and elsewhere. That’s not
just a threat to the thousands of new jobs being created by the renewable
energy industry, but also a threat to our health, our environment and our
planet.” said Jake Schmidt, NRDC’s international climate policy director.
Renewable energy is expected to be a major issue at the
upcoming Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil. Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC) is advocating countries to adopt policies to increase the percentage of
electricity they get from renewable sources to 15 percent by 2020.
“At the Earth Summit, civic and corporate
stakeholders must commit to do more to increase electricity production from
renewable sources. A global agreement to spur this deployment would be helpful.
But it is more important that key actors come to Rio+20 with individual country
commitments to increase the amount of renewable energy to 15 percent of total
electricity by 2020- more than doubling what is predicted under current
trends,” added Schmidt.