[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'T')he majority of voters do support clean energy:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ew polling released Tuesday shows the vast majority of U.S. voters believe the nation should be prioritizing a transition to 100% clean energy and support legislation to decarbonize the economy over the next few decades. Pollsters found that 82% of voters somewhat (33%) or strongly (49%) agree that "the primary goal of U.S. energy policy should be achieving 100% clean energy."

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', 'T')he majority of voters do support clean energy:

[jedrider]

"Fast Crash" helps the well-connected and the super-wealthy.

"Slow Crash" helps everyone else.

Oh, I wonder which path will be chosen?

The Titanic captain says 'Full Speed Ahead!'

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jedrider', '&')quot;Fast Crash" helps the well-connected and the super-wealthy.'

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'T')hat is rather deceptive because a large proportion of voters believe "Natural Gas" is "Clean Energy". In addition a large part of the fall in American CO2 emissions has to do with converting at least some of the largest Coal fired electric power plants to burn Natural Gas as substitute fuel while still retaining the option of burning coal if their is a break in the gas supply. If 20% of coal power plants switch to burning Natural Gas your emissions drop by 10%. If in addition you close some very old Coal plants as was done under the Obama Administration (and long past due) that also eliminated some of the least efficient coal burners completely. Between the two effects the USA is actually consuming more electricity in 2021 than 2007 but the fuel source has shifted from Coal to Gas.

[kublikhan]

If anything, I would argue the public is a bit drunk on the idea of renewables. 100% renewables sounds great, but I think there are technical problems in such an approach, especially in the short to medium term.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')enewable energy is hot. It has incredible momentum, not only in terms of deployment and costs but in terms of public opinion and cultural cachet. To put it simply: Everyone loves renewable energy. It’s cleaner, it’s high-tech, it’s new jobs, it’s the future. And so more and more big energy customers are demanding the full meal deal: 100 percent renewable energy. The Sierra Club notes that so far in the US, more than 80 cities, five counties, and two states have committed to 100 percent renewables. Six cities have already hit the target.

The timing of all these targets (and thus their stringency) varies, everywhere from 2020 to 2050, but cumulatively, they are beginning to add up. Even if policymakers never force power utilities to produce renewable energy through mandates, if all the biggest customers demand it, utilities will be mandated to produce it in all but name.

The rapid spread and evident popularity of the 100 percent target has created an alarming situation for power utilities. Suffice to say, while there are some visionary utilities in the country, as an industry, they tend to be extremely small-c conservative.

They do not like the idea of being forced to transition entirely to renewable energy, certainly not in the next 10 to 15 years. For one thing, most of them don’t believe the technology exists to make 100 percent work reliably; they believe that even with lots of storage, variable renewables will need to be balanced out by “dispatchable” power plants like natural gas. For another thing, getting to 100 percent quickly would mean lots of “stranded assets,” i.e., shutting down profitable fossil fuel power plants. In short, their customers are stampeding in a direction that terrifies them.

The takeaway: Renewables are a public opinion juggernaut. Being against them is no longer an option. The industry’s best and only hope is to slow down the stampede a bit (and that’s what they plan to try).

Utilities don’t think it is wise or feasible to go 100 percent renewables. But the public loves it. And I mean loves it. Check out these numbers from the opinion survey:


Here’s the most striking slide in the presentation:


In case you don’t feel like squinting, let me draw your attention to the fact that a majority of those surveyed (51 percent) believe that 100 percent renewables is a good idea even if it raises their energy bills by 30 percent.

That is wild. As anyone who’s been in politics a while knows, Americans don’t generally like people raising their bills, much less by a third. A majority that still favors it? That is political dynamite.

Insofar as utilities were in a public relations war over renewables, they’ve lost. They face a tidal wave.

[Newfie]

Is it even possible to convert to 100% renewables by 2050?

I seriously doubt it. And I doubt ANY municipality is currently 100% renewable. That would imply no natural gas heating or cooking and 100% electric vehicles and that all of their imports like food were transported on electric vehicles.

So what does “100% renewables” mean. Zero diesel use? NO airplanes? Electrify the entire railroad network? ALL shipping to USA on sailboats?

And even if you accomplish ALL of that then you have the energy content in all of the products you import. So your Honda and Hundai need to be 100% renewable production. Including the iron mines.

Lots of nonsense talk about “clean energy” and renewables and what stopping climate change would entail.

For the vast majority the dime has not yet dropped.

[kublikhan]

When these guys say "100% renewable energy" what they really mean is "100% renewable electricity". It is misleading. They are not the same thing. Just because some city gets 100% of it's electricity from renewable sources does not mean the city has 100% renewable energy. And just because some small city with a large hydro dam nearby can get all of it's electricity from renewables, that doesn't mean that same approach is viable for the country at large. And even that small city is not truly running on 100% renewable electricity.

But all of this is complicated and requires digging into the weeds of the issues to understand it. The public is not exactly know for doing this. Instead they simply see the strong points of renewables, the evils of fossil fuels, and then start waiving their "100% renewable energy" signs. It does however explain why renewables are so popular among the public.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n 2014, Burlington, Vermont announced that it had reached an energy milestone. The city of 42,000 produced enough power from renewable sources to cover all its electricity needs. Burlington, the city government proclaimed, was one of America’s first “renewable cities.”

Since then, Burlington has been joined by Georgetown, Texas, Aspen, Colorado, and a few other small towns across the country. And though some cities have a head start — Burlington benefits from a huge amount of hydroelectric power and ample wood for biomass burning — many that rely on fossil fuels for power are joining in. Today, more than 170 cities and towns across the U.S. have promised to shift their power supply from coal and natural gas to solar, wind, and hydropower. St. Louis, which currently gets only 11 percent of its power from renewables, says that it will run purely on renewables by 2035; coal-dependent Denver has promised to do the same by 2030.

“Cities are setting these goals and striving to go from a very small percentage of renewables to 100 percent on an extremely ambitious timeline.” But are 100 percent renewable cities actually … 100 percent renewable? The reality is a bit complicated — and it shows the challenges of true, “deep” decarbonization of electricity in the United States.

First, shifting to clean electricity doesn’t mean that a city zeroes out its carbon footprint — residents could still be driving gas-guzzling cars or heating their homes with natural gas. Even most claims of running on “clean” electricity come with caveats: What cities actually mean is that they purchase enough electricity from wind, solar, or other clean sources to balance out the power that they use over the course of the year. For places filled with renewables, like Vermont, that’s not such a big deal. But in other areas, a city might not be using all renewable electricity in real-time. Even when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, electrons still need to be flowing through the grid to keep the lights on. And at the moment, a lot of that more consistent energy comes from non-renewable sources, mainly natural gas and coal.

“There’s really no city that operates as an island in electricity,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. “You’re going to be connected to a larger grid.” There’s no such thing as “fossil fuel electrons” and “renewable electrons” — all power mixes together once it reaches the grid. That means even a 100 percent renewable town might, from time to time, be sourcing its electricity from fossil fuels. Because of this, Rhodes says that goals to run purely on renewables are more like accounting mechanisms than a pure description of a city’s energy sources.

At the moment, this isn’t a big problem: Most cities have a long way to go even to get to that stage. But in the long run, experts say that this strategy is not going to get the country entirely off fossil fuels. Renewables like wind and solar are only available at certain times of the day, but a truly “clean” grid would have carbon-free sources of electricity ready to go at all times.

Local governments haven’t yet tried to meet this much higher bar, and it’s hard to blame them. A lot of the technologies required for clean, round-the-clock electricity aren’t quite ready yet.

“Renewables have had great progress over the past decade,” Sepulveda said. “And that’s great.” But total decarbonization will require clean energy other than solar and wind.

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mousepad', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jedrider', '&')quot;Fast Crash" helps the well-connected and the super-wealthy.'

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kublikhan', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n 2014, Burlington, Vermont announced that it had reached an energy milestone. The city of 42,000 produced enough power from renewable sources to cover all its electricity needs. Burlington benefits from a huge amount of hydroelectric power