New Energy Is Waiting

Wind and Solar Are Booming, but Emissions Aren’t Falling

Benjamin Storrow, October 4, 2022 (EE News/ClimateWire)

Wind and solar generation surged 22 percent through the first nine months of the year, building on a period of record-breaking renewable energy installations last year…The growth has helped fill a gap in electricity production created by the falling use of coal, which is down 8 percent through September…But emissions impact of the renewable boom has been blunted by the growth of natural gas generation, which is up 7 percent, and falling output from nuclear facilities…[Power sector emissions fell] 1 percent through the first half of the year…

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A big question is whether the United States can sustain the growth in renewable generation. The climate and health bill passed by Congress in August will direct nearly $370 billion to low emission projects over the next decade. But renewable energy developers face growing headwinds from the economic downturn, supply chain bottlenecks and transmission constraints…

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…[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] found that 674 gigawatts of utility-scale solar was waiting to connect to the grid in transmission queues around the country. That is roughly ten times the amount of solar installed in the United States to date…[And utility-scale] solar installations produced 104 terawatt-hours of electricity through September, a 30 percent increase over the same time last year…Wind generation was nearly 325 TWh through the first three quarters of this year, a 19 percent increase over that time period in 2021 and a 53 percent rise since 2019. Wind and solar now account for roughly 14 percent of U.S. power generation…” click here for more

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