In our latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast that electricity generation from U.S. hydropower plants will be 14% lower in 2021 than it was in 2020. Extreme and exceptional drought conditions have been affecting much of the western United States, especially California and states in the Pacific Northwest, which are home … [continued]
Primary energy consumption totaled 93 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in the United States in 2020, or 7 quads less than in 2019. Fossil fuels — specifically petroleum, natural gas, and coal — accounted for 79% of total U.S. energy consumption in 2020. About 21% of U.S. energy consumption in … [continued]
A California company, Natel Energy, is hard at work developing a low-head, low-impact hydropower approach that addresses one of the leading concerns of new deployment — impacts to natural stream flows. Of course, if environmental mitigation strategies take too big a bite out of revenues, the effort is a nonstarter. At … [continued]
The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) expects that slightly more than 50% of new US power capacity in the next 3 years will come from solar power — and that’s just considering large-scale solar power projects, not small-scale/rooftop solar power installations. According to FERC’s January 2021 to December 2023 … [continued]
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).
In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that electricity generation from hydroelectric power plants in the United States will grow by 4% in 2020 from 2019 levels
Following our monthly electricity capacity report, here’s CleanTechnica‘s latest US electricity generation report, in which we add estimated rooftop solar generation to the EIA’s latest figures (released yesterday) and make it all much more consumable and useful for the average Joe or Jill (or Muhammad or Selena or whatever). While … [continued]
Until now, the US hydropower fleet has never been fully documented, but a new report conducted by the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has filled this gap, providing industry and policy makers with a full run-down on the country’s hydropower capabilities. The first ever Hydropower Market Report … [continued]
The US Dept. of Energy today released two groundbreaking information resources on national hydro, wave and tidal energy resources. According to the reports – the most comprehensive of their kind to date – these water power resources, if developed, could supply 1/3 of total US electricity demand by 2030.
The US wind energy industry can create and save 54,000 jobs, including expanding the wind energy manufacturing sector by 1/3 to 46,000 jobs, according to the results of a study completed by Navigant Consulting. That’s given a stable federal tax policy that includes extending the existing wind energy production tax credit (PTC) for another four years. The AWEA, along with US manufacturing industry groups, labor unions and environmental groups, is pushing for Congress to pass recently introduced legislation that would extend the PTC through 2016.
