NEWS A Totally Green Electric Grid Will Dramatically Speed Up Climate Action
July 28, Bloomberg News: Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/what-the-world-gets-if-u-s-electricity-becomes-100-green
Today, 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.”
Published: July 28 2020, Bloomberg News
You must be logged in to post a comment.