ScienceRocks
Democrat all the way!
- Banned
- #1
Renewable Energy = 90% Of New US Electricity Generation Capacity In January (Exclusive)
March 10th, 2015 by Zachary Shahan
Coals dead!!! Wind and solar makes up the majority of new energy.
March 10th, 2015 by Zachary Shahan
Based on data from FERC and educated “other solar” (essentially rooftop solar) estimates from CleanTechnica, we’ve found that 90% of new electricity generation capacity added in the United States in January 2015 came from renewable energy sources. To be more precise, 90% came from solar and wind energy.
The largest source of new capacity came from wind energy (54.7%), rooftop solar was second (26.7%), natural gas was third (10.5%), and utility-scale solar PV brought the rest (8.1%).
Renewables did very well in January 2014 as well. Solar and wind accounted for 94%, while all renewables accounted for 99.9%.
For all of 2014, solar and wind energy accounted for 55% of new US electricity generation capacity, while all renewables together accounted for 57% of new US electricity generation capacity. Natural gas accounted for 42%, coal accounted for 0.6%, nuclear for 0.4%, and oil for 0.3%.
Of course, it’s great to see renewables accounting for the majority of electricity generation capacity growth. Comparing new capacity to cumulative installed capacity (essentially, every power plant in the US that can produce electricity), a couple of key points come out:
- Renewables are still a small portion of our electricity mix. (Wind = 5.6% and solar = 1.4%, together coming to 7%. All renewables combined = 17.2%.)
- The trend is very clearly toward renewables.
Coals dead!!! Wind and solar makes up the majority of new energy.