The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think

Renewables are growing faster than I dared to hope.  I was astonished to see some of the statistics presented here.  It is ironic that a great deal of it is in the traditional oil producing areas of the US.

"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.

A similar energy transition is already well underway in Europe and elsewhere. But the United States is catching up, and globally, 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. Heating, cooling, cooking and some manufacturing are going electric."

I realize that many readers of Energy Central don´t have a lot of confidence in what The New York Times presents. Still, the data speak for themselves.

And it isn´t difficult to discover why renewables are growing so quickly: Cost.

However, I´m not so sure that the recent uptick in the cost of renewables is really just about supply-chain problems. Going forward, the average cost for wind may well increase due to the higher costs anticipated for floating wind.  On the other hand, offshore wind turbines will be bigger and will more consistently produce electricity.

As for solar:

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.

“The world has produced nearly three billion solar panels at this point, and every one of those has been an opportunity for people to try to improve the process,” said Gregory Nemet, a solar power expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And all of those incremental improvements add up to something very dramatic.”

 But even more important is the influx of money from the government as a result of three programs:

1. 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.

2. The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act set aside billions of dollars for semiconductors vital to car manufacturing.

3. 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.

By the way:

"Biden has expressed regret at calling the bill the Inflation Reduction Act."

"I wish I hadn’t called it that because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it has to do with providing alternatives that generate economic growth," Biden said last week at a fundraiser in Utah."

It is important to point out that the first two programs were bipartisan.  Looking back I find that a little difficult to believe,  especially considering what is going on at the moment.  It won´t be popular to say it, but the previous president has managed to suck all of the oxygen from the room, effectively strangling any further legislative progress.

There is some irony in the fact that a great deal of the new jobs associated with the boom in renewables are in "red" states.

"‘Energy Is Energy’

As the workday begins in Tulsa, Okla., the assembly line at the electric school bus factory rattles to life. Crews fan out across the city to install solar panels on century-old Tudor homes. Teslas and Ford F-150 Lightnings pull up to charging stations powered in part by the country’s second-largest wind farm. And at the University of Tulsa’s School of Petroleum Engineering, faculty are working on ways to use hydrogen as a clean energy source.

Tulsa, a former boomtown once known as the “Oil Capital of the World” where the minor league baseball team is the Drillers, is immersed in a new energy revolution.

At the port, an Italian company, Enel, is building a $1 billion solar panel factory. The bus factory is operated by Navistar, one of the biggest commercial vehicle makers in the world. And the city’s main electric utility, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, now harvests more than 28 percent of its power from wind."

About two-thirds of the new investment in clean energy is in Republican-controlled states, where policymakers have historically resisted renewables. But with each passing month, the politics seem to matter less than the economics.

“We’re the reddest state in the country, and we’re an oil and gas state,” said J.W. Peters, president of Solar Power of Oklahoma.

"Houston, home to more than 500 oil and gas companies, also has more than 130 solar- and wind-related companies. Some of the country’s largest wind and solar farms are in the Texas flatlands outside the city, and a huge wind farm has been proposed off the coast of Galveston."

"In Arkansas, a planned solar farm — the state’s biggest — is expected to help power a nearby U.S. Steel factory that is undergoing a $3 billion upgrade. When complete, the plant will use electric furnaces to mold scrap steel into new products. That will result in about 80 percent less greenhouse gases, the company says, and set the pace for an industry that has been a major polluter." 

However, the US still lags behind other large economies in installation of renewables.

"China, which already leads the world in the sheer amount of electricity produced by wind and solar power, is expected to double its capacity by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. In Britain, roughly one-third of electricity is generated by wind, solar and hydropower. And 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."

Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick  of Texas have been speaking and acting strangely, to say the least,  with regard to renewables. On the one hand, they tout the success of renewables in Texas. On the other, they propose legislation to favor fossil fields over renewables.  And who could forget the still often repeated:

"...Abbott’s baseless claim that the 2021 statewide blackout was caused by evil wind turbines and failed solar power."

Perhaps this is why Patrick talks very differently than he walks. In recent months he has taken to boasting that Texas ranks fifth among all polities worldwide in terms of renewable-energy capacity, trailing only the United States as a whole, China, India, and Germany. (He may be overstating our prowess. By some measures, we rank a mere twelfth.) “There is nothing wrong with renewable energy, okay?” Patrick said in March, at a conference hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an advocacy group heavily funded by fossil fuel interests. “It helps clean the air and helps keep our prices lower. That’s why a lot of companies move here—because our cost per kilowatt is so much cheaper than other states.”

Such rhetoric, however, is undercut by the agenda relentlessly pursued by Patrick and his party during this year’s legislative session. One bill proposed a new process making it extremely difficult to set up offshore wind farms in state waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even the outlook for electric vehicles is finally looking up: 

But the battle is very far from won.  The "culture wars" may yet poison the well of progress.  The disinformation network is still very much at work:

"Dozens of conservative groups organized by the Heritage Foundation have created a policy playbook, should a Republican win the 2024 presidential election, that would reverse course on lowering emissions. It would shred regulations designed to curb greenhouse gases, dismantle nearly every federal clean energy program and boost the production of fossil fuels."

"The Heritage Foundation worked on the plan with dozens of conservative groups ranging from the Heartland Institute, which has denied climate science, to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”"

And there is an extremely long road ahead to meet climate goals.   And "real" wars intervene.  But the progress over the last few years is, nonetheless, encouraging.