How New Energy Is A Uniting Force
What unites America around clean energy
James Redford and Adam Browning, September 11, 2018 (Washington Post)
“…[Across the U.S., there are countless motivations driving the energy] transition: climate change, healthier air, environmental justice, customer choice, national security and energy freedom…[But there is one universal driver that transcended position and political affiliation — and that’s pure economics…[Forecasts suggest] that by 2050, wind and solar will produce 50 percent of the world’s electricity just from the gravitational pull of cost-competitiveness. Over the past 10 years or so, the cost of solar power in the United States has declined 86 percent and wind 67 percent…[Businesses and municipalities signing solar power contracts and investing in wind mills or solar farms instead of natural gas plants based purely on cheap prices…[and affordable] energy storage technologies are beginning to hit the market…
The five largest publicly-traded companies in the world — Apple, Amazon, Google’s Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook — all have corporate commitments to use 100 percent renewable energy…The eighth largest, Berkshire-Hathaway, owns one of the country’s largest utility wind and solar portfolios…[By 2020, Berkshire-Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy] aims to become the nation’s first investor-owned utility to produce enough renewable energy to cover 100 percent of its customers’ electricity needs…[New Energy is also] putting money back into our local economies…[Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s administration redirected the state’s annual $18 billion spend on imported fossil fuels into would be better spent investing in [Minnesota] infrastructure…Today, 57,000 Minnesotans work in the state’s growing new energy economy…While there are about 50,000 who work in the coal mining industry in the United States, 349,000 Americans get their paycheck from a solar-related business…” click here for more
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