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Wind While the amount of new wind turbine capacity installed looked to be the lowest in at least six years, windpower continued to set records for generation in different regions of the country.
We at the Union of Concerned Scientists think a lot about windpower. In honor of Global Wind Day , here’s a roundup of what we’re seeing and what we’ve been thinking—five facts about wind energy to keep in mind as you celebrate, or at least make note, on June 15. Windpower is big, and getting bigger.
Does it finance coal or windpower, deforestation or ecological recovery? Follow the money. Whatever politicians promise, what matters is where investment goes.
Having won rights to develop wind farms off the coast of Scotland, Shell, Total, and BP are set to invest more in windpower than in oil and gas drilling in the North Sea in the years ahead, the latest evidence of oil majors changing tack on renewables to better navigate the energy transition. Read more on E360 ?.
The same scenario has played out with the power plants that use fossilfuels, predominantly methane (“natural”) gas, delivered by pipelines. The electric power system is trapped by gas-dependent power plants that cannot obtain gas when it needs it to keep the lights on. It’s a vicious feedback loop.
In a new report , the International Energy Agency is calling for an immediate end to new investments in fossilfuel supply projects such as pipelines, the rapid adoption of renewable energy such as solar and windpower, and a large-scale research and development program to develop future technologies, including advanced batteries, producing energy (..)
Batteries can also be used to assist with peak electricity demand; currently instead of batteries, fossilfuel-powered “peaker plants” are often used to supply energy during high-demand periods. Despite being used infrequently, these plants are inefficient and highly polluting, and contribute to US carbon emissions.
The country recently announced that its Egyptian New and Renewable Energy Authority and the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company have approved a major windpower project, developed by a company based in a country hostile to phasing out fossilfuels; Saudi Arabia. GW of windpower installed, the 1.1
The progress in the numbers The new numbers are from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA), which collects data from power plant operators from across the country. Solar power increased the most among renewable electricity sources in percentage terms, up 24 percent. It supplied 10.5 percentage points).*
Minnesotans are facing concurrent crises of climate change, high energy prices and inflation, and the inequitable public health impacts of fossilfuel air pollution. Renewable energy will help with all of that—but we need a grid that is designed for wind and solar instead of having to rely on expensive coal and gas plants.
The world is moving away from fossilfuels in favour of things like new and improved heat pumps and renewable energy sources. That means that getting to 100% and also increasing the supply that will be needed to get rid of fossilfueled transportation (both here in Canada and also for our neighbours in the U.S.)
During the month of May, solar and windpower generated more electricity (30.6%) than fossilfuels (27.3%) in the European Union for the first time in history. In the meantime, fossilfuels went from 40-50 percent to less than 30 percent. Now here is the latest piece of evidence, from Ember.
Windpower costs fell by half from 2008 to 2021. Cheaper renewable energy attracts private investment and makes limits on fossilfuels more feasible. We will still need major efforts to phase out fossilfuels and create the physical and institutional infrastructure for a net-zero economy.
While a wind-powered cargo vessel may seem like a 19 th Century idea, the Grain de Sail may be a herald of a greener future rather than a nostalgic nod to the past. By the end of the week one thing seemed likely, a price on shipping fuel’s carbon emissions even if it doesn’t end up being the exact levy proposed by the Marshall Islands.
By combining these supportive policies with studies of where they can be most effective in supporting the power grid, Illinois can see where to best focus its clean energy development efforts. This “heat map” displays the results of power flow modeling with Illinois PJM-connected coal and gas plants removed from the system.
Fuel transport – Spring floods can hinder the transportation of fuels like coal. While it is a heavily polluting fossilfuel that is set to continue declining as a fuel source for US electricity generation over the next decade, coal still accounted for roughly 20 percent of the country’s generation in 2022.
This much-needed set of 18 projects will improve electricity reliability, address overloaded wires , and help unlock more lower-cost wind and solar power to replace costly, polluting fossilfuel plants in Michigan and many other states in the Midwest (including Illinois and Minnesota ). Source: MISO.
The results include two developers cancelling their offshore windpower contracts with states and utilities, another cancelling two projects altogether, and hesitation elsewhere. The good news-bad news balance, though, would seem to tip decidedly in favor of a whole lot more offshore wind.
But the scientific and technological advances that made these technologies competitive with fossilfuels are much more recent. One thing you’ll notice is the importance of government-funded research and deployment incentives in helping to launch the solar and wind sectors. 500-900.
EIA is also projecting continued cost reductions and low prices for solar and windpower, such that natural gas and renewable energy are price competitive. From their thinking in November 2021, EIA projects that wholesale gas prices will remain less than $4.00/ million BTU through 2050, lower than gas prices in 2021.
Today, the fossilfuel industry is aggressively promoting a liquefied natural gas facility near Philadelphia, explicitly targeting the most overburdened and underrepresented communities in the area so that they can export more gas overseas.
Weifang Port’s “zero-carbon” certification was primarily achieved by transitioning away from fossilfuel use, according to China Electric Power News (CEPN). It has built a windpower system to provide green energy for its operations and deployed hydrogen-powered vehicles to replace fossil-fuel-powered trucks.
That lower-than-expected electricity demand also makes spring (and the other “shoulder” season, fall) the go-to seasons for fossilfuel and nuclear power plants to go offline for scheduled maintenance—or refueling, in the case of the nuclear plants. That means that there are fewer of them competing to supply demand.
I sometimes ask students to guess what state produces the most windpower. It’s not as if the state’s extensive use of windpower is just a historical fluke, either. The state will soon get more power from renewables than natural gas. They’re always shocked to find out the right answer: Texas.
Reduce the dependency on fossilfuels It urges governments, companies, and individuals to reduce fossilfuel dependency and scale up sustainable alternatives. Earth Day takes place on 22 April and marks its 55th anniversary in 2025.
A series of windpower projects in Romania is set to increase the country’s windpower capacity significantly. The three confirmed projects will increase Romania’s windpower capacity by 609 megawatts (MW). Several other windpower projects are in the planning stage, but none have yet been confirmed.
Some fossilfuel industry proponents have pitched coupling carbon capture and storage (CCS) with the methane reforming process to limit the resulting carbon pollution. Producing hydrogen via solar- or wind-powered electrolysis produces hydrogen, water, and no carbon. Is green hydrogen carbon-free?
To understand the scale of the wind farm, it covers an area of 132 km2 2 and about 170 kilometres of underwater cables have been laid. A significant increase in windpower capacity.
New Englanders pay exorbitant prices to maintain winter reliability Up until now, ISO-NE has not had the option of looking to offshore wind as a way to protect winter reliability. Instead, it has focused on increasing the supply of fossilfuels during extreme cold weather.
For the first time ever in the 27-year history of UN climate talks, at COP26 fossilfuels were mentioned in the final agreement. This shows that we are getting nearer to consigning the fossilfuel industry to history, even though there’s still a long way to go. Of those fossilfuels, coal will be the first to go.
In order to make their portfolio more sustainable and respond to lower fossilfuel demand, oil majors are increasingly snapping up renewable energy projects as the pressure grows to take action on climate change. This has incentivized oil and gas majors such as BP, Equinor and Shell to invest in windpower generation.
Electricity from renewable sources dropped even as Illinois and surrounding Midwest states pushed to replace fossilfuels, such as coal and natural gas, with wind and solar power.
In order to reduce emissions, we must phase out fossilfuels—oil, coal and gas—and move towards renewable energy and less plastic and petrochemical production since these products, so dangerous as ocean pollutants, are made from oil. Individual nations, like Vietnam, made new commitments as well.
Regionalizing the grid could allow California to take advantage of renewable energy in other states such as windpower from Wyoming and hydropower in the Pacific Northwest. But it also would require California to give up some of its energy autonomy.
Generating and storing clean energy is a lifeline for the planet’s future; burning coal, oil, and gas fossilfuels causes 75% of greenhouse gas emissions. A fossilfuel energy grid extracts and expends finite resources. Energy from the sun and wind never runs out and is used again and again. Click to learn more!
This is a signal not only of the country’s unhealthy reliance on fossilfuels but also a failure to move away from gas in a way that other countries have done successfully. Now such a crisis has arisen again.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be powered by hydrogen. Hydrogen may have lost the race to fuel electric cars but it looks a likely contender to replace fossilfuels in trucks, ships, planes and heavy industry. The Tokyo Olympics will be powered by a fuel with ambition – hydrogen. By Fred Pearce.
We all know that to successfully address climate change we need to phase out fossilfuels and switch to electric power. A s we transition our homes and vehicles to electric power, it’s imperative that the electricity sector be clean. The costs of wind and solar power have been dropping like a stone.
SMR is a high-carbon process that uses fossilfuels for process heat. They typically refer to fossil SMR hydrogen as “ grey ” hydrogen. Clean hydrogen could replace fossilfuels for large vehicles and vessels that make long trips. We make hydrogen mainly using steam methane reforming (“SMR”).
The flagship wind farm made headlines as the operator, Swedens’s Vattenfall in 2018 won the concession to build it without government subsidy. The Netherlands plans to connect more than 20 GW of windpower before 2030. 20 GW before 2030. The Dutch are also trialling a cluster of floating solar panels named ‘Oceans of Energy’.
And EIA projects the capacity of windpower, already the largest source of renewable electricity in the country, to grow 4.7 Solar and wind together will leap past coal With all that new generating capacity, wind turbines and solar panels will be producing appreciably more electricity than in years past.
Alberta: Speak Up For a SAFE Climate: Take Action Here How Climate Action Makes Life More Affordable Renewable energy, including solar and windpower, is much cheaper and less polluting than burning fossilfuels such as natural gas, oil and coal.
The Southwest Power Pool’s latest proposal once again downplays the risk of fossilfuel plant failures while it undervalues the advantages of windpower.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (left) visits a hybrid power plant where “green” hydrogen is made using windpower and fed into the gas grid. At the same time, Germany is having to find ways to reduce its reliance on Russian fossilfuels and readjust its long-planned energy transition. By Arne Jungjohann.
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