the price of crude oil has crashed in the past few months. That’s bad for the clean energy sector, right?

Actually, not necessarily. Not only do falling oil prices have limited impact on clean energy, but the latest price volatility only underscores how unstable petroleum sources remain and so accentuates the value of clean sources.

There are two principal reasons why the clean energy industry will not be swamped by the petroleum glut.

To begin with, while all commodities in the energy industry are to an extent intertwined, oil and renewable energy do not directly compete with each other. Oil is primarily used to produce transportation fuels, while renewable energy is used to generate electricity.