By Natalia Lima / Source: Ecorazzi

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The world is officially favoring clean energy instead of fossil fuels with more gigawatts being deployed by sources like wind and solar than coal, natural gas and oil combined.

The positive stats were released by the analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, who also say that we’ve been favoring clean sources of energy as a planet since 2013. That year, 143 gigawatts from renewable sources were created, while fossil fuels generated 141 gigawatts of power.

“The electricity system is shifting to clean,” said Michael Liebreich of Bloomberg New Energy Finance at the company’s The Future of Energy Summit 2015 in New York City last week. “Despite the change in oil and gas prices, there is going to be a substantial build-out of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the build-out of coal and gas.”

That build-out, according to Bloomberg will be of four times the one of fossil fuels by 2030 but that doesn’t mean we should all think that the issue of climate change is resolved.

In order to keep the momentum, Nathanael Greene of the Natural Resources Defense Council, thinks the United States will have to take the lead in supporting clean energy.

On a national scale, he tells EcoWatch, the US will have to renew policies that have allowed clean energy sources to thrive in the past years.

“There are three federal policies, at a minimum, that need to be renewed if we are to continue to push down prices and deploy more clean energy: the Production Tax Credit for wind power and the Investment Tax Credit for offshore wind power, both of which have already expired; and the 30 percent Solar Investment Tax Credit, which remains in effect through 2016,” he explains. “That credit has been pivotal in solar’s exponential growth in recent years, including double-digit job growth in an industry that provides good-paying jobs to many people with only high school degrees. That credit should be renewed as well.”

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