The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster
Than You Think
The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries.
Delivery vans in Pittsburgh. Buses in Milwaukee. Cranes loading freight at the Port of Los Angeles. Every municipal building in Houston. (!) All are powered by electricity derived from the sun, wind or other sources of clean energy.
Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.
...change is happening at a pace that is surprising even the experts who track it closely.
Wind and solar power are breaking records, and renewables are now expected to overtake coal by 2025 as the world’s largest source of electricity. (!) Automakers have made electric vehicles central to their business strategies and are openly talking about an expiration date on the internal combustion engine. ...
This is unbelievable.
As the planet registers the highest temperatures on record, rising in some places to levels incompatible with human life, governments around the world are pouring trillions of dollars into clean energy to cut the carbon pollution that is broiling the planet.
The cost of generating electricity from the sun and wind is falling fast and in many areas is now cheaper than gas, oil or coal. Private investment is flooding into companies that are jockeying for advantage in emerging green industries.
“We look at energy data on a daily basis, and it’s astonishing what’s happening,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency. “Clean energy is moving faster than many people think, and it’s become turbocharged lately.”
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...in the United States, 23 percent of electricity is expected to come from renewable sources this year, up 10 percentage points from a decade ago.
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...from Beijing to London, Tokyo to Washington, Oslo to Dubai, the energy transition is undeniably racing ahead. Change is here, even in oil country.
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Since 2009, the cost of solar power has plunged by 83 percent, while the cost of producing wind power has fallen by more than half. The price of lithium-ion battery cells fell 97 percent over the past three decades.
I am ecstatic to reveal how wrong I was. Maybe earlier than 2009 I was convinced that solar would never be as cheap as petroleum, that all the money the government spent on solar since the Carter administration was as sensible as on a perpetual motion machine.
...This year, for the first time, global investors are expected to pour more money into solar power — some $380 billion — than into drilling for oil.
The rapid drop in costs for solar energy, wind power and batteries can be traced to early government investment and steady improvements over time by hundreds of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs around the world.
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An equally potent force, along with the technological advances, has been an influx of money — in particular, a gusher since 2020 of government subsidies.
In the United States, President Biden signed a trio of laws during his first two years in office that allocated unprecedented funds for clean energy: A $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law provided money to enhance the power grid, buy electric buses for schools and build a national network of electric vehicle chargers. The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act set aside billions of dollars for semiconductors vital to car manufacturing. And the Inflation Reduction Act, which marks its first anniversary on Aug. 16, is by far the most ambitious attempt to fight climate change in American history.
That landmark law provided tax breaks related to electric vehicles, heat pumps and energy efficiency upgrades, solar panel and wind turbine manufacturing and clean hydrogen production. The government is also investing in efforts to capture carbon emissions and store them before they can reach the atmosphere, as well as technology that can remove them directly from the air.
Originally estimated to cost roughly $391 billion between 2022 and 2031, the tax breaks are proving so popular with manufacturers and consumers that estimates now put the cost as high as $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
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“There’s a lot of appetite to invest in the United States thanks to that law,” said Giovanni Bertolino, an executive at Enel, adding that the plant his company is building in Tulsa would not exist without the Inflation Reduction Act.
Regulations are also hastening the energy transition. Mr. Biden has proposed tough new federal pollution limits on tailpipes and smokestacks, but several states are acting on their own.
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With costs falling fast, manufacturing has picked up and installations of solar and wind projects have increased. The U.S. solar industry installed a record 6.1 gigawatts of capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a 47 percent increase over the same period last year. (in 1 yr!)
‘A National Phenomenon’
Steve Uerling Tulsa...mechanical engineer, said...“My fuel cost is equivalent to getting 200 miles a gallon on gasoline."...
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.. EVgo, which has one of the largest fast-charging networks in the United States, plans to more than double the 3,000 charging stalls it operates.
“It is not a red-state, blue-state thing,” said Cathy Zoi, EVgo’s chief executive. “It is a national phenomenon.”
🙏 Quasis. 🙌🥳 Future's so bright we gotta wear 😎
