64% of US States Could Supply 100% of Their Own Power From Renewable Energy, New Rules Project Shows
Using just the resources that are currently commercially deployable; 31 of our 50 states, or 64% of US states could get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources in-state, and another 14 percent could generate 75 percent of their electricity in-state, according to a paper published by New Rules Project that focuses on the potential for local production.
In some ways, very local; which actually makes this a conservative estimate. For example:
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Solar. The New Rules Project study looked only rooftop solar potential, and not the obviously far larger utility-scale solar potential as the idea was to see what could be done with existing resources only in each state, and not adding transmission lines.
(Strangely; the authors inexplicably omit waste biomass or waste fueled electricity, like from landfill gas, cow power and sewage sludge as sources for producing electricity, that has tremendous potential. There is no peak poop, after all. )
But it still has a wealth of detailed data (2007), well presented in these graphs showing the relative resource for each state for
Pg 2 Wind
Pg 3 Off-shore Wind
Pg 4 Micro Hydro
Pg 5 Combined Heat & Power
Pg 6 Geothermal
Pg 7 EGS
Pg 8 Negawatts
Pg 9 Transmission Potential (my notes)
Pg 10 Relative Costs
Being from BC Canada, I have to wonder how much of the power shown in the Northern States includes renewable from Canada.
BTW the last number I have are 50,120 million kWh exported from all of Canada (2007)
Now you need to realize, the USA gets a helluva bargain on this power while everyone in BC gets shafted - and the IPP’s get shafted by the Provincial Governments who in turn are shafted by back room deals Federally.
Sorry - had to add that so people realise where some of their electrical power comes from…
No, this study did not count out of state power currently, but potential for in-state power, only.
Thanks for your electrons though, Canada. We like the green ones.
I live in one of those ‘Northern States”. We get O% Of our electrons from Canada. So MD? STUFF IT!
I luv Canadians… don’t be a hater Ty.
The fact is, the potential or capability to produce renewable power is not the issue. The issue is getting producers to retrofit businesses to use or produce renewable energy. Most companies simply aren’t willing to loose profits to change their “system”. THAT is the problem we must overcome. As consumers, we must strong-arm gov’t and private business to do things “our way” or loose our business.
I would like to see some comparisons between the costs to build and install the various generation sources. Then compare that to the cost of the new transmission lines. I also think that the cost of building new generation should be incorporated into the cost of generation.
Tim, read the study I linked, then. It is about a 50 page pdf with multiple comparisons.
But the states wanted to know how much bang they could get for their buck IF THEY SPENT NOTHING on transmission, so this study was for how much renewable power was right in their own state’s ‘backyards’.
Like; if solar was all right on peoples roofs: what was the potential generation and cost?