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86 Percent of New Power in Europe From Renewable Sources in 2016 (theguardian.com)
Renewable energy sources made up nearly nine-tenths of new power added to Europe's electricity grids last year, in a sign of the continent's rapid shift away from fossil fuels. From a report on The Guardian: But industry leaders said they were worried about the lack of political support beyond 2020, when binding EU renewable energy targets end. Of the 24.5GW of new capacity built across the EU in 2016, 21.1GW -- or 86% -- was from wind, solar, biomass and hydro, eclipsing the previous high-water mark of 79% in 2014. For the first time windfarms accounted for more than half of the capacity installed, the data from trade body WindEurope showed. Wind power overtook coal to become the EU's second largest form of power capacity after gas, though due to the technology's intermittent nature, coal still meets more of the blocâ(TM)s electricity demand.
I checked and the USA was even lower at only 61.5% of new capacity being renewable. I was surprised there was any non-renewable being built new. If we truly started "phasing out" non-renewables then you would expect new capacity to be 100% renewable or even above 100% (if existing non-renewable plants were being shut down). I didn't realize we were still building *any* new coal/gas plants. I knew the existing ones were still being used but surprised that they were still building new ones. I'm surprised with as much renewable that is being built that our energy usage is going up fast enough to need that much new energy.
So, in spite of all of the feel-good bullshit, physics wins. Renewables are getting all of the federal money, and repairing coal plants has been effectively outlawed, but natural gas has the power density and demand responsiveness that current renewables can't and wont.
Yeah totally, so that way the US can be a couple of decades behind, still be pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and end up with a backwards economy.
That's how the US succeeded, by sitting on its fucking ass.
That's exactly what we did with digital TV.
While other countries were rolling out their own specs, the US held back and waited a couple of years. When we decided to switch the technology had grown more capable, new algorithms for compression and such were available, and ...we leapt ahead of everyone else in the world.
As far as the CO2 thing, that's probably a marketing issue. The people worried about that haven't done an effective job of presenting their case to the rest of the country. I'm not saying their case is *wrong*, just that it was ineffectively presented. The arguments are largely based on insults and derision, hyperbolic doom and gloom, and suppression of dissent. It's hard for people to get behind a message presented that way.
Our country went from great to backwards over the last 20 years or so under the globalism model, starting with NAFTA (1994) and continuing to other countries. It's highly likely that continuing that same model would have driven us further into 3rd world status, but we've recently changed course.
There's no guarantees, but plotting a different economic course might bring us back to 1st world status. We'll have to wait a couple of years to see if this works - if not, we can try something else. It's fairly clear that doing the same thing harder would only hasten our destruction.
It would be nice for a change....
For a change? The US relied on overseas development for steam engines, internal combustion engines, rocketry, Canal-building and more.
Hell, the US still hasn't caught up on the metric system. Let alone a workable political system.
No wonder you're behind.
with regards to the actual R&D, German companies can take credit for industry standard wind turbine, PV, and inverter technology.
Let us know when you are willing to make a change.