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Wind, Solar Surpassed 10 Percent of US Electricity In March, Says EIA (thehill.com)
According to the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration, wind and solar produced 10 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. for the first time in March. The Hill reports: The Energy Information Administration's (EIA) monthly power report for March found that wind produced 8 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. that month, with solar producing 2 percent. The two sources combined to have their best month ever in terms of percentage of overall electricity production, EIA said. The agency expects the two sources topped 10 percent again in April but forecasts that their generation will fall below that mark during the summer months. Due to the way geographic wind patterns affect the generation of electricity, the two sources typically combine for their best months in the spring and fall. Annually, wind and solar made up 7 percent of electric generation in 2016, EIA said.
Get ready for federal 'tweaking' to prevent further renewable growth. Time to tax renewables so that coal can be competitive again. Now that renewables are seriously starting to cut into market share, special interests are going to pull out all the stops to make sure nothing changes.
Turns out a lot of this wind power is coming from "red" states, like Kansas for example. From the nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... "Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state. Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first. Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election."
Where does this subsidies rumor keep coming from? Yes the subsidies may have been the deciding factor at first, but they did their job and drove down costs as the new technologies gained wider adoption. It's been years now since then. Here, the Energy Information Administration publishes an annual forecast on the costs of different sources of energy. You can see that the cost ($/MWh) before subsidies is lower for onshore wind than anything save geothermal and basically tied with natural gas (but only natural gas plants which do not capture carbon emissions). And the cost for photovoltaic solar before subsidies is just above that, more expensive than hydroelectric but still cheaper than nuclear, biomass, etc.
There's some variation there depending on how you measure, you can see there are multiple charts, but in none of those are solar or wind dependent on subsidies to be more cost effective than most of their competition.
What a load of crap. Oil is subsidized even more, and you pay for that with increased taxes AND increased healthcare costs AND increased military costs. Kickstarting solar/wind is a smart long term thinking solution. Oil is on the long downward slope now. And the NDP was not killed by bad policies but by big banks and corporations who stood to lose when the gov't put people first, rather than corporations.