Renewables = 20.4% of US Electricity Generation
In the first 10 months of 2020, renewable energy sources accounted for 20.4% of United States electricity generation. That’s up from 17.5% in the same time period in 2018.
In the first 10 months of 2020, renewable energy sources accounted for 20.4% of United States electricity generation. That’s up from 17.5% in the same time period in 2018.
Last week, I published an update on US power capacity — new additions as well as total power capacity. The good news was that 100% of new capacity power in October was from renewable sources. The less good news was that only 21.7% of total power capacity is from wind, water, and solar power plants (only counting large-scale solar, not small-scale rooftop solar).
Formula 1 commits to becoming carbon neutral in 2021 and fully net zero by the year 2030.
The green hydrogen economy has been simmering away and is set to boil over in the USA when President-Elect Joe Biden takes office.
In the first 3 quarters of 2020, while renewable energy accounted for 70% of new power capacity in the country, it still accounted for just 20.4% of total electricity generation in those 9 months.
In the first three quarters of 2020, renewable energy — almost entirely solar and wind energy — accounted for 70% of new US power capacity, based on official utility-scale power plant data from FERC and small-scale solar power estimates from CleanTechnica.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published a special short profile on New York’s renewable energy leadership and split. What I found particularly interesting in the piece, though, was the variation in renewable energy splits in the different top states.
The electric system of 2050 will be around 2.5 times the size of the electric system today due to electrification. But electricity is so much more efficient at producing the final “energy services” (heat, motive power, light, etc.) that total energy use will be far lower than it is today.
In 2019, consumption of renewable energy in the United States grew for the fourth year in a row, reaching a record 11.5 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), or 11% of total U.S. energy consumption.
Electricity from coal power plants has declined from 26.9% of US electricity generation in the first 7 months of 2018 to 17.7% of US electricity in the first 7 months of 2020. Furthermore, that’s down from 33% in 2015, 39% in 2014, 45% in 2010, and 50% in 2005.