Clean energy has had a record-breaking year in the US, but without a fundamental change in policy, oil and gas will continue to dominate the US energy sector for the next three decades, according to two new energy reports released.
The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) annual energy outlook predicts that the United States, the world’s largest oil and gas producer, will continue to produce record amounts of crude oil and gas by 2050 if it continues on its current path. Unless something changes, oil and gas will continue to be the country’s “most consumed” energy sources until the middle of the century. “Even though renewables are growing faster, there is a large built-in fossil fuel use base that necessitates at least some form of policy action, which we will see do not lose their dominance by 2050,” EIA acting director Stephen Nalley said in a webinar.
The Biden administration has set a goal of virtually eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, and multiple studies have shown that this is needed globally to prevent an even more severe climate crisis. The only way to achieve this is to switch from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy sources like solar and wind farms.
There is significant movement in this direction, but not enough. Clean energy broke several records in the US in 2021, according to another analysis published by BloombergNEF and the Trade Group Sustainable Energy Business Council.
Last year recorded a record $105 billion in private investment in renewable energy and hydrogen and carbon capture technologies that can clean up hard-to-reduce pollution from batteries, electric transportation and heavy industry. The developers created 37 GW of additional generation capacity from wind and solar, helping it set another record for how much renewable energy contributes to the electricity grid. Electric vehicle sales also doubled from 2020 to 2021.
Even so, renewable energy still accounts for just over 20 percent of the US energy sector, with gas nearly twice that. This means that the Biden administration has a long way to go to meet its target of a 100 percent clean energy sector by 2035. Industry group American Clean Power
The bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year includes $80 billion in federal investment in clean energy technologies, including new transmission lines crucial to bringing energy from remote wind and solar farms to cities and towns. However, most of Biden’s remaining plans to clean up the power grid depend on the beleaguered budget reconciliation bill that Democrats have been debating for months. Proposals to set federal clean energy standards and penalize utilities for sticking to dirty energy have already been shelved. The latest version of the bill still contains significant tax incentives for clean energy, but these are still unclear as the bill is stuck in Congress…
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