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More Solar And Wind Power In The U.S.

January 2, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, both wind and solar power are contributing more and more to total electrical generation in the United States. For the first 8 months of 2019, the combination of wind and solar power accounted for almost 10% of U.S. electrical generation.

Solar, including small-scale PV systems on home rooftops, grew by almost 14% compared to the first eight months of 2018 and accounted for more than 2.7% of total electrical output. In fact, small-scale solar generation increased by 19% and provided nearly a third of all the solar power in the country.

Wind energy in the U.S. increased by 4.4%, accounting for almost 7% of the country’s electricity.

Overall, renewable energy sources – which include biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind – accounted for 18.49% of net domestic electrical generation during the first 8 months of 2019. The non-hydro renewable sources actually accounted for over 11% of total electricity production and saw a year-over-year growth of 6%.

Outside of renewables, nuclear-generated electricity declined by 0.6% and coal power dropped by almost 14%. Much of the coal generation was replaced by natural gas, which grew by 6.5% compared to the previous year.

Renewables now accounting for nearly 20% of overall electricity generation in the US represents significant progress. But the variations by state continue to be substantial. For example, while Vermont gets 99% of its power from renewables, Ohio gets only 2%.

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Solar and wind energy provide almost 10 percent of total generation in the US in 2019

Photo, posted April 8, 2019, courtesy of City of St. Pete via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And Economic Inequality

June 3, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

A new study by Stanford University looked at the effects of climate change on global economic inequality. The study found that the gap between the economic output of the world’s richest and poorest countries is larger today than it would have been without global warming.

The warming climate has enriched cooler countries like Norway and Sweden while dragging down economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria. The results of the study showed that most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been in the absence of rising temperatures. At the same time, the majority of rich countries are richer than they would have otherwise been.

Detailed analysis of 50 years of annual temperature and GDP measurements for 165 countries demonstrated that growth during warmer than average years has accelerated in cool nations and slowed in warm nations. Historical data clearly show that crops are more productive, people are healthier, and they are more productive at work when temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold. That means that in cold countries, a little bit of warming can help but the opposite is true in places that are already hot.

For most counties, whether global warming has helped or hurt economic growth is pretty certain. Tropical countries in particular tend to have temperatures far outside the ideal for economic growth and they are already among the poorest countries. It is less clear how warming has influenced growth in countries in the middle latitudes, such as here in the United States. Some of the largest economies are near the perfect temperature for economic output but continued warming in the future is likely to push them away from the temperature optimum.

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Climate change has worsened global economic inequality

Photo, posted November 1, 2011, courtesy of CIAT via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

More Renewables Without Storage In Texas

February 27, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Texas has a Texas-sized appetite for electricity and relies most heavily on natural gas, coal and nuclear power to get it. But in recent times, wind power has grown tremendously in the Lone Star State and it has already leapfrogged past nuclear power. Coal could be the next domino to fall.

In the past few years, solar power has become competitive with wind in terms of price. Texas is a large, coastal state in the sunny southwestern U.S. and has significant solar resources. As a result, the amount of solar power in Texas is now growing rapidly.

In order for a combination of solar and wind power to address the bulk of electricity demand in Texas, there needs to be a way to provide reliability that these intermittent sources don’t necessarily provide. Energy storage is a solution that ultimately is likely to be part of most electricity grids, but currently it is still expensive on a utility scale.

A new study from Rice University looked at the complementarity of solar and wind power in Texas. Complementarity refers to balancing the output of solar and wind systems. The peak performance of wind and solar occurs at very different times in different regions of the state. The study suggests that the right mix of solar and wind systems in the right parts of Texas could provide a continuously reliable energy system. On both a yearly and daily basis, wind and solar power resources in Texas complement each other in terms of peak performance. It is a matter of locating the solar power and wind farms in the right places.

With the Texas solar industry really starting to boom, there is a real opportunity to integrate far more renewable energy into the Texas grid.

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More Renewables with Less Energy Storage: Texas Shows How

Photo, posted June 8, 2018, courtesy of Laura Lee Dooley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Battery That Eats Carbon Dioxide

October 30, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Fossil fuel-based power plants are increasingly considering the use of carbon capture technologies as a way to reduce emissions. The biggest challenge to the wide-spread adoption of such technology is its energy cost, which of course equates to economic cost. Present-day power plants equipped with carbon capture systems can use up to 30% of the electricity they generate just to power the capture, release, and storage of carbon dioxide.

Water From Desert Air

May 7, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Last spring, we talked about a solar-powered water harvester designed to pull water out of even dry desert air. The prototype device was described in a paper by scientists at UC Berkeley and MIT in the journal Science.

Geothermal Power For LA

February 1, 2018 By EarthWise 1 Comment

Los Angeles has a tremendous thirst for electric power and is always trying to find new sources. On December 1, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began buying all the power generated by the brand-new 24 MW Tungsten Mountain geothermal power plant located in Churchill County in Nevada’s Great Basin region.

Air Pollution And Solar Power

July 28, 2017 By EarthWise

We are well-aware of the negative effects of air pollution on human health and on the environment, but a recent study at Duke University has revealed that global solar energy production is taking a major hit due to air pollution and dust.