More power to ya: More renewable energy on the way to more people

With energy demand in the U.S. expected to increase 22 percent by 2040, according to information presented on the PBS NewsHour (via a factoid displayed during the Jan. 4, 2017 broadcast), having enough electricity to meet America’s growing energy needs, needs to be assured.

It’s a pretty good bet that more and more of this energy will be generated from renewable sources.

To support this, in the Dec. 5, 2016 Natural Resources Defense Council press release: “NRDC Annual Energy Report: The U.S. ‘Clean Energy Revolution’ Is Making Historic Gains and Will Not Be Reversed,” the NRDC announced: “America’s transition to a clean energy economy is irrevocably underway and delivering deep pollution reductions, with coal use at record lows but renewable energy higher than ever, according to the Fourth Annual Energy Report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). One sign of how far things have advanced: more than one-fifth of the U.S. population lives in a state with a goal of at least 50 percent renewable energy.”

“As the NRDC report shows, smarter energy use in our homes, buildings, and appliances reduces the need for dirty fuels and allows utilities to avoid building polluting power plants, lowering customer bills and emissions levels.”

“… Primarily as a result of historically low coal use, energy efficiency gains, and soaring generation from solar and wind, 2015 marked a milestone in modern U.S. history: carbon dioxide emissions from electric generation dropped below those of the entire transportation sector for half of the year,” the NRDC in the release proclaimed.

Accelerating into a Clean Energy Future is the title of the Natural Resources Defense Council report. There is more on this and other NRDC reports here.

Meanwhile, in this same area, a second milestone in as many weeks was reached but a week later.

As so detailed in the “First U.S. Offshore Wind Project Goes Online” press release of Dec. 12^th, the international nonprofit environmental organization declared: “The nation’s first offshore wind project, located in Rhode Island in waters off Block Island, began generating electricity today, officially launching a clean energy technology that has the potential to power millions of U.S. homes and businesses while further bolstering America’s domestic wind energy industry,” the NRDC further relating that in development located offshore are at least 10 more wind power projects; existing is the potential for 86 gigawatts of power capacity by mid-century, that is, with the right policies in place, estimates the U.S. Department of Energy. That 86 gigawatts of power generation, according to information in that Dec. 12, 2016 release, is enough of an electricity supply to power 31 million homes in the year 2050. “… [T]he rapidly advancing onshore wind industry provided almost 5 percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2015,” the NRDC continued.

By 2021, courtesy of federal tax credit extensions and additional policies, wind capacity onshore is expected to increase 70 percent, the NRDC in that very same release added.

Supplying power from the wind (a renewable energy resource) to help meet U.S. demand.

Published by Alan Kandel