Search
Close this search box.

Despite the mandates, subsidies & regs — solar & wind generate only 14% of U.S. electricity in 2022

https://apnews.com/article/renewable-energy-coal-nuclear-climate-change-dd4a0b168fe057f430e37398615155a0

Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced Monday.

Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation in 2022 after first doing so last year.

Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%.

“I’m happy to see we’ve crossed that threshold, but that is only a step in what has to be a very rapid and much cheaper journey,” said Stephen Porder, a professor of ecology and assistant provost for sustainability at Brown University.

California produced 26% of the national utility-scale solar electricity followed by Texas with 16% and North Carolina with 8%.

The most wind generation occurred in Texas, which accounted for 26% of the U.S. total followed by Iowa (10%) and Oklahoma (9%).

“Renewable energy is now the most affordable source of new electricity in much of the country,” added Wetstone.

This presents challenges for engineers and policy-makers, Porder said, because existing energy grids were built to deliver power from a consistent source. Renewables such as solar and wind generate power intermittently. So battery storage, long-distance transmission and other steps will be needed to help address these challenges, he said.

The EIA report found the country remains heavily reliant on the burning of climate-changing fossil fuels. Coal-fired generation was 20% of the electric sector in 2022, a decline from 23% in 2021. Natural gas was the largest source of electricity in the U.S. in 2022, generating 39% last year compared to 37% in 2021.

 

#

Image

Renewables Aren’t Renewable: ‘Americans face a future of perpetual scarcity: rationed…micro-managed access to energy’

Page 182 Green Fraud:

Passing Wind

In 2020 climate activist Bill McKibben claimed, “In the last 10 years, engineers have driven the price of sun and wind power down below coal.” But H. Sterling Burnett, an energy policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, explained why McKibben’s claim was not accurate. “What McKibben doesn’t disclose is that he’s only counting the price of wind and solar on days when they are operating at peak capacity, while ignoring their capital costs,” Burnett wrote.

“The fact that wind and solar produce so little of the world’s electricity mix is proof positive that they are substantially more expensive than conventional energy,” Burnett explained. “McKibben also conveniently fails to count the tremendous subsidies wind and solar power received from the government. Indeed, without government subsidies and mandates, wind and solar power would largely be a boutique power supply for the wealthy,” Burnett explained.

 

King Coal: ‘It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker’

Despite Green Hype, Coal Still Makes 55 Times More Power Than Solar

Indian villagers protest Greenpeace solar grid: ‘We want real electricity, not fake electricity!’ – ‘Coal Trumps Solar in India’

Share: