NEWS A Totally Green Electric Grid Will Dramatically Speed Up Climate Action

July 28, Bloomberg News: Read more at: https://​www​.bloombergquint​.com/​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​w​h​a​t​-​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​-​g​e​t​s​-​i​f​-​u​-​s​-​e​l​e​c​t​r​i​c​i​t​y​-​b​e​c​o​m​e​s​-​1​0​0​-​g​r​een

imageToday, 40% of America’s elec­tric­ity comes from carbon-​​free sources. The Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date has made get­ting that to 100% by 2035 a cen­ter­piece of his $2 tril­lion plan to address cli­mate change and cre­ate jobs. Get­ting there would take an enor­mous expan­sion of solar and wind capac­ity in the U.S., backed by mass adop­tion of energy-​​storage tech­nolo­gies and hang­ing onto exist­ing hydro­elec­tric and nuclear plants.

I call it the first linch­pin,” says Leah Stokes, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Santa Bar­bara who researches elec­tric util­i­ties. “As the elec­tric­ity sys­tem cleans up, it unlocks other sec­tors more eas­ily.” Not every­thing could run on clean elec­tric­ity, at least not imme­di­ately. Solar and wind alone may never be able to gen­er­ate enough energy consiste

Even if you go to clean energy for power plants and vehi­cles, we still use lots of hydro­car­bons to make things,” says Daniel Kam­men, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berkeley’s Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab­o­ra­tory, who for­merly served as renew­able power spe­cial­ist at the World Bank. Many of these processes start to become cost effec­tive when renew­able power reaches about 4 cents per kilowatt-​​hour, he says. Some new solar and wind facil­i­ties can already hit that price point. “The low cost of renew­ables means we could get off of that. This is an oppor­tu­nity to build bet­ter com­pounds at lower cost.”

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Pub­lished: July 28 2020, Bloomberg News

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