Clean Renewable Energy Can Meet All Our Needs

Updat­ed Decem­ber 2009

[See print­able PDF of this fact sheet]

Where Our Energy Comes From

The U.S. has 4.6% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion,¹but uses 25% of the world’s oil, gas and elec­tric­i­ty.² Annu­al U.S. ener­gy demand is 100 quads (quadrillion btus).³ 39% of this ener­gy use is elec­tric­i­ty, 33% is heat­ing fuels and 28% is the trans­porta­tion sec­tor.⁴

Our elec­tric­i­ty comes from: coal (48%), nuclear (19.3%), nat­ur­al gas (21%), hydro­elec­tric (6%) and oil (1.6%). The remain­ing 4.1% comes from wood and waste burn­ing, wind, solar, geot­her­mal, and oth­er minor sources.⁵

Oil plays a very minor role in elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion, but is the pri­ma­ry fuel (96%) in the trans­porta­tion sec­tor. Fuels used for trans­porta­tion and heat­ing in the U.S. are oil (37%), nat­ur­al gas (48%) and coal (7%). Oil is used to meet 40% of our total ener­gy use (trans­porta­tion, heat­ing and elec­tric­i­ty com­bined). Coal and Nat­ur­al gas each pro­vide 22.5%.⁶

66% of the oil we use is import­ed. 49% of our oil imports come from the Amer­i­c­as (most­ly Mex­i­co, Cana­da and Venezuela). 16% of our imports come from the Per­sian Gulf; 18% is from Africa (most­ly Nige­ria).⁷ 97% of nat­ur­al gas comes from the U.S. and Cana­da via pipelines, but now that we’re start­ing to run short of gas in North Amer­i­ca, there are over 60 pro­pos­als for liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas import ter­mi­nals, which would increase our depen­dence on for­eign sources of nat­ur­al gas, just as with oil.⁸

more on Where Our Ener­gy Comes From

Plans for More Dirty Energy

As of Novem­ber 2007, there are plans for 120 new coal­fired pow­er plants in the U.S., at least 25 new nuclear reac­tors, two new oil refiner­ies, 190 new ethanol biore­finer­ies (most of which would be pow­ered by mini-coal pow­er plants), dozens of bio­mass incin­er­a­tors, and around a dozen coal-to-oil refiner­ies. All of these would cause seri­ous harm to the envi­ron­ment. Grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups are ris­ing up to fight off many of these pro­pos­als. Pre­vi­ous waves of dirty ener­gy devel­op­ment have been stopped by grass­roots activism, includ­ing 60–90% of the nuclear reac­tors, trash incin­er­a­tors and nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants planned since the 1970s.

The Good News: We Don’t Need Dirty Energy

A com­bi­na­tion of con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind and solar can meet 100% of our ener­gy needs. It’s tech­ni­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to do this and it can prob­a­bly be done with­in 20 years. Accord­ing to a Jan­u­ary 2006 analy­sis by the Depart­ment of Energy’s Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NREL), the entire U.S. elec­tric­i­ty demand could tech­ni­cal­ly be met by renew­able ener­gy resources by 2020 and longer term, the poten­tial of domes­tic renew­able resources is huge – more than 85 times cur­rent U.S. ener­gy use. Solar alone can pro­vide 55 times our cur­rent ener­gy use. Wind can pro­vide 6 times our cur­rent ener­gy use.⁹

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Conservation and Efficiency
Currently our energy demand creeps up 1–2% each year.¹⁰ This trend can be reversed. Conservation and efficiency have huge potential to reduce demand. 

The U.S. uses twice as much ener­gy per per­son as Japan and Europe – coun­tries with high stan­dards of liv­ing. Cut­ting our ener­gy use in half would make us as ener­gy effi­cient as Japan and Europe.¹¹

Busi­ness and indus­tri­al cus­tomers account for 63% of elec­tric use¹² and 79% of heat­ing fuel use,¹³ so most of the demand reduc­tion bur­den isn’t on the res­i­den­tial home­own­er.¹⁴ Much can be saved by upgrad­ing motors and lighting.

Gov­ern­ment, indus­try and inde­pen­dent analy­ses have shown that cost-effec­tive ener­gy effi­cien­cy improve­ments could reduce elec­tric­i­ty use by 27% to 75% of total nation­al use with­in 10–20 years – with­out impact­ing qual­i­ty of life or man­u­fac­tur­ing out­put. This has been doc­u­ment­ed by the U.S. Con­gress, Office of Tech­nol­o­gy Assess­ment (1993, claim­ing 33% over 12 years);¹⁵ the Elec­tric Pow­er Research Insti­tute (1990, claim­ing 27–44% over 10 years);¹⁶ and the Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute (1990, claim­ing 75% over 20 years).¹⁷

The need for heat­ing fuels can be reduced through weath­er­iza­tion and geot­her­mal heat pumps, which use the rel­a­tive­ly con­stant tem­per­a­ture of the earth to pro­vide heat­ing and cool­ing. Geot­her­mal can reduce ener­gy used for heat­ing and cool­ing by 30–60%. ¹⁸

In the trans­porta­tion sec­tor, over­all fuel econ­o­my for cars and light trucks in the U.S. mar­ket reached its high­est lev­el in 1987, when man­u­fac­tur­ers man­aged 22.1 mpg. The aver­age in 2004 was 20.8 mpg. Using hybrid tech­nol­o­gy, this aver­age can be dou­bled by 2015. The Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists calls for increas­ing fuel econ­o­my to 40 mpg by 2015 and 55mpg by 2025.¹⁹

more on Con­ser­va­tion and Efficiency

Wind Power

Since 1993, the Depart­ment of Ener­gy has pub­lished data show­ing that wind pow­er can pro­vide more pow­er than the entire nation’s elec­tric­i­ty needs.²⁰ The plains states have been called the Sau­di Ara­bia of wind. North and South Dako­ta alone have enough wind ener­gy from its high­est wind speed sites to sup­ply over half of the nation’s elec­tric­i­ty needs.²¹

In the past 20 years, wind tech­nol­o­gy has come a long­way. The cost has dropped dra­mat­i­cal­ly and con­tin­ues to drop as more wind tur­bines are mass pro­duced. Wind is already cost-com­pet­i­tive with coal and nat­ur­al gas in some parts of the country.

Off-shore wind ener­gy also has great poten­tial. A 2005 Depart­ment of Ener­gy study shows that almost 70% of U.S. elec­tric­i­ty use can be met with off-shore wind-pow­er with­in 50 miles of the U.S. coast­line.²²

In 2005, researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty pub­lished a study show­ing that there is enough wind pow­er avail­able on each con­ti­nent to meet one and a half times the entire world’s ener­gy needs.²³

Many have expressed con­cern about bird kills from wind tur­bines. Wind tur­bines kill an aver­age of about two birds per tur­bine per year. To put this in per­spec­tive, the U.S. could get half its elec­tric­i­ty from wind pow­er and the bird fatal­i­ties would be less than 1% of the num­ber of birds house­cats kill each year.²⁴ At sites in PA and WV, how­ev­er, large num­bers of bats have been killed by wind tur­bines. The indus­try is work­ing to fig­ure out how to pre­vent this.

more on Wind Pow­er

Solar Power

Solar can be used in many ways. Pas­sive solar can be used by design­ing new homes and build­ings to take advan­tage of nat­ur­al sun­light. Ener­gy used to heat water can be reduced through solar hot water heat­ing. Solar ther­mal tech­nolo­gies can be used to con­cen­trate sun­light to heat water and make elec­tric­i­ty. Car­bon tax­es could poten­tial­ly make it cost effec­tive to use con­cen­trat­ed solar for ener­gy inten­sive indus­tries like cement man­u­fac­tur­ing so that they don’t need to burn coal or wastes.²⁵ Com­mer­cial-scale con­cen­trat­ing solar pow­er facil­i­ties are becom­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive; facil­i­ties over 10 megawatts are com­ing in at 11 cents/kwh, and is pro­ject­ed to go down to less than 6 cents,²⁶ mak­ing it cheap­er than cur­rent res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty rates.²⁷

When most peo­ple think of solar pow­er, they think of pho­to­volta­ic (PV) solar pan­els, which pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty from sun­light. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy esti­mates that a dis­trib­uted solar sys­tem suf­fi­cient to meet the entire U.S. elec­tric­i­ty demand would require an aver­age of 17 square miles of PV per state.²⁸ Using vacant land, park­ing lots and rooftops would pro­vide enough land for this. Using just the esti­mat­ed five mil­lion acres of aban­doned indus­tri­al “brown­fields” sites in our nation’s cities could sup­ply 90% of Amer­i­ca’s cur­rent elec­tric demand.²⁹

PV is still quite cost­ly, but costs are drop­ping rapid­ly
as demand increas­es, large­ly thanks to state-based
renew­able ener­gy incen­tives, like those in NJ and CA.

more on Solar Pow­er

What About When the Wind Isn’t Blowing…

What about when the wind isn’t blow­ing and the sun isn’t shin­ing? A 2005 study by the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency found that wind pow­er, spread across a wide enough area, con­nect­ed to the region­al elec­tric grids, can pro­vide sta­ble, pre­dictable amounts of elec­tric­i­ty.³⁰ Also, off-shore wind pow­er is more reg­u­lar­ly avail­able and can pro­vide the reg­u­lar “base­load” sort of pow­er that fos­sil fuels and nuclear pow­er are used for. As we approach high per­cent­ages of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced from wind and solar, ener­gy stor­age meth­ods will become necessary.

more on Grid Sta­bil­i­ty and Ener­gy Storage

Hydrogen for Energy Storage

When there is excess wind and solar pow­er, that pow­er can be used to elec­trolyze water, turn­ing it into hydro­gen and oxy­gen. That hydro­gen can be stored and when pow­er is need­ed, it can be used to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty, while turn­ing hydro­gen back into water. Grid-tied fuel cells make it pos­si­ble to rely entire­ly on “inter­mit­tent” tech­nolo­gies like wind and solar. Oth­er strate­gies, includ­ing fly wheels, super­ca­pac­i­tors,³¹ com­pressed air, or (elec­tric) vehi­cle-to-grid sys­tems may emerge as win­ners once we get to the point where we have to wor­ry about over-reliance on inter­mit­tent gen­er­a­tion sources.³²

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Alternative Transportation/Heating Fuels

Cur­rent­ly, there are many schemes for pro­duc­ing alter­na­tive fuels. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, none of them are avail­able in large enough quan­ti­ties to replace oil and gas. Also, if used on a mass scale, they all involve seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal harms, whether we’re talk­ing about coal-based liq­uid fuels,³³ ethanol,³⁴ biodiesel (80% is from biotech soy)³⁵ or waste-based fuels.³⁶

Hydro­gen is no alter­na­tive fuel, since it’s not an ener­gy source, but an ener­gy car­ri­er. It makes no sense to con­vert elec­tric­i­ty to hydro­gen only to turn it back into elec­tric­i­ty in fuel cell vehi­cles.³⁷ Ener­gy can be saved – and a com­plex and expen­sive hydro­gen fuel­ing infra­struc­ture can be avoid­ed – by using elec­tric­i­ty direct­ly with plug-in hybrid elec­tric cars.³⁸

The use of com­bustible fuels in trans­porta­tion can be elim­i­nat­ed with the use of elec­tric cars (and plug-in hybrids in near term), using wind-pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty, at a cost less than $1/gallon gaso­line equivalent.

For the next 10–20 years, mon­ey for “alter­na­tive” fuels should instead be focused on con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy tac­tics, includ­ing hybrids and pub­lic tran­sit improve­ments. Ulti­mate­ly, cars should be run on clean elec­tric­i­ty, avoid­ing all forms of combustion.

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Foot­notes for Solutions

U.S. Cen­sus Bureau Pop­u­la­tion Clock. http://www.census.gov As of Jan 2009, U.S. pop­u­la­tion is 4.524% of world pop­u­la­tion – a per­cent­age that is slow­ing shrink­ing as world pop­u­la­tion grows faster than U.S. pop­u­la­tion. US 305,735,220 and World 6,757,947,017. U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, Inter­na­tion­al data (2006–2007). www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/contents.html U.S. share of world ener­gy con­sump­tion is as fol­lows: 21.1% of total ener­gy, 23.3% of total elec­tric­i­ty, 24% of oil, 20.5% of nat­ur­al gas, 31.1% of nuclear pow­er-gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty, 17.6% of coal-gen­er­at­ed ener­gy, 9.6% of hydro­elec­tric pow­er and 26.6% of oth­er elec­tric­i­ty sources (a fig­ure which includes geot­her­mal, solar, wind, wood burn­ing and waste incin­er­a­tion). U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, “Ener­gy Overview.” www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0101.htmlA btu is a British Ther­mal Unit, a stan­dard unit of ener­gy. U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, “Ener­gy Con­sump­tion by Sec­tor” – 2006 data from tables 2.1b through 2.1f. www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/consump.html Ibid. Using pro­ject­ed 2007 data, wood and waste incin­er­a­tion totaled 1.3% of elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, geot­her­mal was 0.35%, wind pow­er was 0.77% and solar was 0.01%. Or See http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0802a.html Ibid. US Imports by Coun­try of Ori­gin. EIA. tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_a.htm U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion Brown, Eliz­a­beth, “Near-Term Prac­ti­cal and Ulti­mate Tech­ni­cal Poten­tial for Renew­able Resources,” Draft, NREL, Jan­u­ary 2006, p.4. www.energyjusticenetwork.org/solutions/NREL_Renew.pdf Annu­al Ener­gy Out­look 2007, EIA. www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/overview.html CIA World Fact Book www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ Retail Sales and Direct Use of Elec­tric­i­ty. EIA. www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat7p2.html Ener­gy Con­sump­tion by Sec­tor www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/consump.html (link to sum­ma­ry data we compiled) Emis­sions of Green­house Gas­es in the Unit­ed States 2005. EIA. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html C&E page www.energyjusticenetwork.org/solutions/c_and_e/ Ibid. Ibid. What Can You Do to Pro­mote Alter­na­tives, page 2. Pub­lic Cit­i­zen. www.citizen.org/documents/WhatCanYouDoRenewable.pdf A New Road: The Tech­nol­o­gy and Poten­tial of Hybrid Vehi­cles. 2003. Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists. www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/Hybrid2003_final.pdf “Wind Ener­gy Resource Poten­tial”. DEP. www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/wind_potential.html Ibid. See also, www.energyjusticenetwork.org/solutions/wind US Off­shore Wind Ener­gy Oppor­tu­ni­ty. NREL. www.windpoweringamerica.gov/pdfs/workshops/2005_summit/musial.pdf Archer, C.L., Jacob­son, M.Z. 2004. Eval­u­a­tion of Glob­al Wind Pow­er. Jour­nal of Geo­phys­i­cal Research, v. 110; D12110. Rel­a­tive Kills Rates (of birds). www.futureenergy.org/infowindbirds.html Eco­nom­ic Assess­ment of Indus­tri­al Solar Pro­duc­tion of Lime.http://solar.web.psi.ch/data/publications/pdf2/lime_Annex2004.pdf Page 29 of Pre­sen­ta­tion by Dr. Dan Arvizu, Direc­tor, Renew­able Ener­gy and Util­i­ties, A Per­spec­tive from NREL, PGE Board Meet­ing, June 17, 2008.Claims PV poten­tial 11–18¢/kWh by 2010; 5–10¢/kWh by 2015. CSP 8.5¢/kWh by 2010 and 6¢/kWh by 2015. Aver­age Retail Price of Elec­tric­i­ty to Con­sumers. EIA. www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat7p4.html DOE solar page: www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/myths.html Ibid. www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/cons Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency and Oor­ga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment. Case Study 5: Wind Pow­er Inte­gra­tion into Elec­tric­i­ty Sys­tems. Sourced at oecd.org/dataoecd/22/37/34878740.pdf Also host­ed NREL. “Ener­gy Stor­age – Ultra­ca­pac­i­tors.” www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/ultracapacitors.html Wood­bank Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ltd. Bat­tery and Ener­gy Tech­nolo­gies. “Alter­na­tive Stor­age includ­ing super­ca­pac­i­tors, fly­wheel, com­pressed air, springs, pumped, super­con­duct­ing mag­net­ic ener­gy.” www.mpoweruk.com/alternatives.htm Schuylkill Tax­pay­ers Opposed to Pol­lu­tion www.ultradirtyfuels.com/ Ethanol Fact­sheet. www.energyjusticenetwork.org/ethanol/ Biodiesel Fact­sheet www.energyjusticenetwork.org/biodiesel/ Alt Fuels Fact­sheet www.energyjusticenetwork.org/fuels/ Hydro­gen Fact­sheet www.energyjusticenetwork.org/hydrogen/ See EV and PHEV info at www.energyjusticenetwork.org/solutions/transportation_heating