Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the US Energy Information Administration reported on Monday.
Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation in 2022 after doing so for the first time last year.
The growth of wind and solar significantly boosted the growth of renewable energy and accounted for 14% of domestically produced electricity in 2022.
“I’m happy to see that we’ve crossed that threshold, but that’s just one step in a journey that needs to be much faster and much cheaper,” said Stephen Porder, professor of ecology and assistant provost for sustainability at Brown University. .
California produced 26% of utility-scale solar electricity, followed by Texas at 16% and North Carolina at 8%.
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Most wind generation occurred in Texas, which accounted for 26% of the US total, followed by Iowa (10%) and Oklahoma (9%).
“This surge in growth is largely driven by the economy,” said Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Renewable Energy Council. “Over the last decade, the levelized cost of wind energy has fallen by 70 percent, while the levelized cost of solar energy has fallen by an even more impressive 90 percent.”
“Renewable energy is currently the cheapest source of new electricity in much of the country,” Wetstone added.
Wind turbines stand in fields near Palm Springs, California on March 22, 2023. Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, according to the US Energy Information Administration. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File)
The Energy Information Administration projected that wind’s share of the U.S. electricity generation mix will increase from 11% to 12% from 2022 to 2023 and solar will grow from 4% to 5% over the period. The share of natural gas is expected to remain at 39% from 2022 to 2023, while coal is expected to drop from 20% last year to 17% this year.
“Wind and solar will be the backbone of renewable growth, but whether they can provide 100 percent of the US’s electricity without backup is something that engineers are debating,” said Brown University’s Porder.
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He said there are many decisions to make as the proportion of renewable energy supplying the power grid increases.
That poses challenges for engineers and policymakers, Porder said, because existing power grids were built to be supplied from a consistent power source. Renewable energies such as the sun and wind are generated intermittently. So battery storage, long-distance transmission and other steps will be needed to meet these challenges, he said.
The EIA report finds the country still dependent on the burning of climate-changing fossil fuels. Coal-fired generation was 20% of the electricity sector in 2022, a decline of 23% in 2021. Natural gas was the largest source of US electricity in 2022, generating 39% last year, up from 37% in 2021.
“When you look at the data, natural gas has been a major driver of reducing greenhouse gas emissions for electricity, largely because it’s replacing coal-fired power plants,” said Melissa Lott, director of research at Columbia’s Center for Global Energy Policy. the university
“Going forward, you can’t keep raising emissions, you have to bring them down quickly,” Lott added.
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The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) impacted the number of renewable energy projects coming online in 2022, Lott said, and is expected to have a “tremendous” impact on accelerating clean energy projects. ___
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