Germany offers energy blueprint: Gerard Wynn

(Reuters) - The shale gas revolution has allowed the United States to tap vast new reserves of gas and oil, but last year's Fukushima nuclear crisis may unleash an alternative blueprint.

There are conflicting signals for green energy investing.

On the one hand, global non-hydro renewable energy generation has grown by 10 percent annually over the past two decades, while investment reached a new record last year, and banks Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America recently endorsed the business case.

On the other, a post-recession pullback in government support has combined with innovation in drilling technology to allow exploitation of oil and gas trapped in shale rock.

Such unconventional fossil fuels are up-ending U.S. energy trade and independence and the economics of coal and wind and solar power at a time when cash is short.

In Japan and Germany, however, the energy picture has been re-shaped instead by the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which triggered a massive shutdown of nuclear power in each.