Renewable energy is all set to be the new basic of coming decade as it helps preserve the environment and produces minimal to zero toxic emissions. The basic aim of using renewable energy is to reduce dependence on carbon footprint and its resulting toxic emission.

- Renewable

Renewable energy is clean and environmentally free; extracting the energy from various sources like the sun, the wind, or through geothermal sources and converting it into usable fuels or electricity includes several challenges. Therefore, the type of technologies used to cater to different aspects of generating power or heat from renewable forms is expected to be one of the prominent industry trends in the coming time. This further includes overall costs from renewables infrastructure manufacturing to generating power at comparatively higher efficiency rates.

UK-based firm, Odqa, has developed new CSP technology. This technology utilizes ultra-high temperature solar receiver that enables high temperature industrial heating processes. This solution has a capability to unlock high-temperature power cycles, increases production, and expands the capacity of photovoltaic (PV) power plants. If utilized effectively this technology is expected to reduce cost of PV plants and improves overall system efficiency.

- Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
There was a trend emerged in 2019 that large corporate were signing power purchase agreement with generators to meet their energy demand. This trend is expected to maximize in 2020, however, emergence of pandemic has completely disturbed the expansion of this concept. This year, therefore, is expected to witness the mass utilization of power purchase agreement.
Corporate shape slowly and steadily in the ongoing energy practices to increase the share of renewable energy in their total energy consumption. In 2019, companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have seen happily signing the agreement. Being a trendsetter in the data industry, these companies are expected to further expand their data centers and even follow the trend of using PPAs. Other data centers are also expected to follow this trend in the coming years to increase the usage of renewable energy. Therefore, 2021 is expected to witness mass utilization of PPA. The other bright side of this consent is growing use of corporate PPAs is fueled by the withdrawal of feed-in-tariffs and other incentives for wind and solar power coupled with the move toward auction mechanisms. Therefore, under such healthy circumstances, corporate PPAs offer an opportunity for developers to sell their power profitably.

- Cybersecurity of the Grid
The fact that growing digitization of the energy grid has lot more associated benefits, but it is vulnerable to cyberattacks. Which means a concrete and sophisticated attack can destroy the entire energy grid. As the degree of digitization increases in the coming time, cybersecurity of the grid is expected to be the mandate in the smart energy infrastructure. In fact, wargames are conducted from time-to-time to test just this scenario. In fact, AI and blockchain might just be the "magic bullet" to help overcome this perennial danger.

- Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS)
Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) is a concept or even a product of modern era. Nobody can think of Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) before five years, but this can be possible with the technology development and incorporation in the energy industry. The future of energy system revolves around distributed energy resources that will be monitored by combination of AI and IoT. Therefore, blockchain and growing number of prosumers (energy consumers that are adding value) comprise energy as a solution. EaaS enables transition from selling electricity to selling services such as effective consumption management, optimization of production details, and closely tracking consumption. The presence of local energy sources and storage options accelerate energy efficiency across the grid while providing access to more people. Several companies in the market already built this platform but the overall event is operating at micro level.