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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.
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 "Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative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."
If by "tweaking", you mean removing subsidies, then that is a good thing. Subsidies are supposed to be a temporary incentive to innovate, not a permanent crutch.
Great. Let's take away subsidies from coal and oil, then.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oil: Ability to deduct research and development costs from income.
You forgot ability to hand-wave away externalities like carbon release.
And then there's coal, ability to hand-wave away externalities like release of fissile nuclear elements into the air..
Meanwhile, solar panels made in/for the first world are required to be recycled (or at least you're paying for it), and to not leach if landfilled in spite of recycling requirements. And solar panels have paid back the energy cost of their production well within their lifetime since the 1970s. And wind power predates human production of electricity.
Since solar is required to account for its mess, it's only fair to count fossil fuels' being permitted to ignore their respective messes as a subsidy. Since we have no technology which can reasonably clean up what coal in particular has done to our environment, the subsidy for that particular fuel effectively amounts to an infinite amount of money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"