Green energy is a slow-moving process across the United States; some politicians advocate for new investments in coal and federal subsidies for renewable power falling to half and conflict among local citizens stopping wind farms. Under the radar, solar, wind biomass, geothermal and hydropower projects are continuing steadily, to the point that in April, green energy hit the milestone. In the first instance in history, renewable energy produced more power than coal-powered power stations across the U.S., a trend expected to continue for a few years.
Nat Egan at CNN has reported that a recent study of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a non-profit organization that helps facilitate the shift to renewable energy sources, has revealed the fact that during April, renewable energy was in the process of surpassing roughly 2,000-2200 megawatt-hours a day produced by coal. It’s also expected to continue until May and will likely be sporadic throughout the remainder of 2019 and into 2020.
“Five years ago this never would have been close to happening,” Dennis Wamsted, IEEFA report author, tells Egan. “The transition that’s going on in the electric sector in the United States has been phenomenal.”
Based on data gathered from the Federal Energy Information Administration, the analysis does not necessarily mean that green energy is the new norm. Wamsted states spring is typically the most favorable time to use renewable energy. Because the energy demand from air conditioners and furnaces is deficient, many coal plants are shut down temporarily to repair and maintain. The spring runoff helps to boost hydropower’s annual output. It’s likely several times before renewables can surpass coal regularly.
Yet, the share of energy derived from coal has been decreasing steadily in the past decade, and, in 2015, it was outpaced by natural gas in the beginning. Since then, natural gas has been at the top of the list, generating around 35 percent of the electricity produced within the U.S. compared to coal’s 27 percent.
Wamsted says that the point at which renewable energy replaces coal for the last time may already have taken place in an unexpected place: Texas. Wamsted states that solar and wind power in the state outperformed coal production during the beginning of the 2019 first quarter. Nearly 300 renewable energy projects scheduled to be completed in Texas within the next few years will improve the state’s numbers over the next several years.
Texas isn’t alone. Several others are also investing in renewable energy, as well. Hawaii, California, New Mexico, and other states have launched aggressive carbon-free energy plans that will require a lot of new green energy initiatives. There’s a further innovation that will make renewables increasingly competitive. Michael Grunwald at Politico writes that the rise of massive, low-cost lithium-ion batteries that store and release solar and wind energy whenever needed makes green energy increasingly appealing to energy businesses. “This will be like the change from analog to digital, or landlines to cell phones,” Susan Kennedy, the director of Advanced Microgrid Systems, a firm that optimizes energy use, states.
Recent data show that green energy is slowly but steadily getting more of a portion of electricity generation. “Coal’s proponents may dismiss these monthly and quarterly ups and downs in generation share as unimportant, but we believe they are indicative of the fundamental disruption happening across the electric generation sector,” Wamsted writes. “As natural gas achieved earlier, renewable generation is catching up to coal, and faster than forecast.”
Despite the positives of renewable energy sources, carbon emissions in the United States rose by 3.4 percent in 2013, reversing the downward trend. The most significant source of carbon emissions was the transportation industry, which saw semi-trucks, planes, and automobiles emitting more carbon into the air than energy stations.