(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Electricity Generation in the USA [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-01-27

This is a short update of what fuels are being used to generate electricity in the USA lower 48. Eleven months of data are included for 2022 so I don’t expect big changes next month.



Wind for 2022 contributed slightly more that 10.2% and solar had 3.6%. This is a nice increase from 2021 and, if wind, solar, and hydro are combined, that contribution was 20% which is more that coal or nuclear. At these rates of increase solar will surpass hydro generation in 3 years. The climb has been rather slow but the Inflation Reduction Act will help.

The generation from coal has plateaued at around 20%. This is mostly due to rising natural gas prices in 2021 from the historic lows of 2019. Nuclear generation has been dropping but the two large units at Vogtle in Georgia should start commissioning within the next twelve months. If Vogtle 3 & 4 were running the nuclear contribution would grow from 18.1% to 18.5%.

We are currently sitting at 60% fossil fuels and 40% low carbon fuels. It would be nice to swap those numbers by 2030. This requires adding 2.6% more wind + solar generation each year on average which is aggressive but doable (edit — kinda bad math here. Need to add 2.6% of 2022 capacity each year). We need to keep the nuclear units running even if that requires subsidies (but no new nuclear units — we need to use the money for wind + solar + storage + transmission). We need to retire as much of the coal burning fleet as possible. What are your opinions? Leave a comment on all this electricity generating stuff.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/27/2149501/-Electricity-Generation-in-the-USA

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.