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United States Power

40% of US Electricity Is Now Emissions-Free (arstechnica.com) 129

Posted by BeauHD from the trending-in-the-right-direction dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just before the holiday break, the US Energy Information Agency released data on the country's electrical generation. Because of delays in reporting, the monthly data runs through October, so it doesn't provide a complete picture of the changes we've seen in 2023. But some of the trends now seem locked in for the year: wind and solar are likely to be in a dead heat with coal, and all carbon-emissions-free sources combined will account for roughly 40 percent of US electricity production. [...]

At this point last year, coal had produced nearly 20 percent of the electricity in the US. This year, it's down to 16.2 percent, and only accounts for 15.5 percent of October's production. Wind and solar combined are presently at 16 percent of year-to-date production, meaning they're likely to be in a dead heat with coal this year and easily surpass it next year. Year-to-date, wind is largely unchanged since 2022, accounting for about 10 percent of total generation, and it's up to over 11 percent in the October data, so that's unlikely to change much by the end of the year. Solar has seen a significant change, going from five to six percent of the total electricity production (this figure includes both utility-scale generation and the EIA's estimate of residential production). And it's largely unchanged in October alone, suggesting that new construction is offsetting some of the seasonal decline.

Hydroelectric production has dropped by about six percent since last year, causing it to slip from 6.1 percent to 5.8 percent of the total production. Depending on the next couple of months, that may allow solar to pass hydro on the list of renewables. Combined, the three major renewables account for about 22 percent of year-to-date electricity generation, up about 0.5 percent since last year. They're up by even more in the October data, placing them well ahead of both nuclear and coal. Nuclear itself is largely unchanged, allowing it to pass coal thanks to the latter's decline. Its output has been boosted by a new, 1.1 Gigawatt reactor that come online this year (a second at the same site, Vogtle in Georgia, is set to start commercial production at any moment). But that's likely to be the end of new nuclear capacity for this decade; the challenge will be keeping existing plants open despite their age and high costs. If we combine nuclear and renewables under the umbrella of carbon-free generation, then that's up by nearly 1 percent since 2022 and is likely to surpass 40 percent for the first time. "The only thing that's keeping carbon-free power from growing faster is natural gas, which is the fastest-growing source of generation at the moment, going from 40 percent of the year-to-date total in 2022 to 43.3 percent this year," notes Ars.

"Outside of natural gas, however, all the trends in US generation are good, especially considering that the rise of renewable production would have seemed like an impossibility a decade ago. Unfortunately, the pace is currently too slow for the US to have a net-zero electric grid by the end of the decade."
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40% of US Electricity Is Now Emissions-Free More

40% of US Electricity Is Now Emissions-Free

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  • congrats. you're about halfway to Canadian level (Score:5, Informative)

    by acdc_rules ( 519822 ) on Thursday December 28, 2023 @10:39PM (#64113663)
    we are about 85% via nuclear, hydro and renewables. and surprisingly, not too many Cdns are aware of this, and are shocked or disbelieve the figures.

    • Re:congrats. you're about halfway to Canadian leve (Score:5, Informative)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday December 28, 2023 @10:51PM (#64113685)

      Sure but to put that in perspective the USA yearly uses now around 4,050TWh and Canada 563TWh which makes this 40% alone a little over 3x the total electricity generation of Canada.

      Canada also has favorable geography for hydro so they can get 60% from that alone and surprisingly per capita Canadians use more electricity (i assume a lot is used by resource extraction)

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      That's not to say the US can't or shouldn't do better or that Canada is any less deserving of credit.

    • Even better - isn't it something like 59% hydro? It's nice that the bulk of it isn't generating nuclear waste products.

      It probably also helps to have so many people living near Niagara Falls.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        Only in Quebec, about 99% hydro, Ontario has nuclear plants and Alberta still uses a lot of coal. Basically, Canada's numbers only look good because of Quebec.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quall ( 1441799 )

      In Canada 2020, 31% was produced from natural gas and 48% was from burning oil.

      Was there a giant influx in nuclear power plants being constructed since the pandemic? You're telling us that in 3 years, the primary sources of energy that made up 89% of Canada's energy consumption has been reduced to less than 15%, and replaced by nuclear power?

      https://energy.ca/canadian-ene... [energy.ca]

      I can see why Canadians are unaware and in disbelief at your claims lol.

      • you are confusing electricity production with total 'energy' produced. the article is about the former.
        • It's also important to consider total carbon mass of fossil products for all purposes rather than those just termed "energy", and GHGs created by processes. Industrial processes are a large contributor that rivals electricity generation. Without decarbonizing them, a large source of GHGs will keep being emitted. (Also, animal ag.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Indeed, most Canadians can't believe how they got it this good.

      Because "Canadians" doesn't mean "Quebecois". It's Quebec that actually has massive hydro potential and supplies everyone else. Who are in a much worse position.

      Hydro, solar and wind are utterly geography dependent.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by buck-yar ( 164658 )
      Renewables = often wood chips, which are more polluting than coal. Stop with the weaseling. Also touters of hydro often forget how much pollution construction created. Lots of earth moving machines, concrete, etc, plus all the pollution needed to make the machines. A magic wand isn't waved and a hydro dam appears. Which leads to the next point, to control the power they increase or decrease the water level, flooding and unflooding large areas of land. Read this article: "Whoops—Dams and Reservoirs Rel

  • While I am all for renewables, they are "low emission", not "emission free". Lying about the characteristics of a goal, regardless how noble, tarnishes that goal and gives its enemies ammunition.

    And since the usual nil wits will chime in: No, nuclear is very much not "emission free" either and only gets a reasonable place by lying about its emissions and cost.

    • Cost seems to be a result of the boondoggle that is US and often EU building costs for big projects, plus having so much in the way of delays that we don't have any crews who are actually skilled at doing it.

      Do you have any citations that the emissions from nuclear energy aren't in line with solar and/or wind power?

      And while, yeah, renewables are typically not "emission free", except that their emissions are normally a result of continued use of fossil fuels and such for resource production and manufacturin

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Do you have any citations that the emissions from nuclear energy aren't in line with solar and/or wind power?

        No. But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry claims about itself over the years. 40 years of watching them lie, lie and lie some more will do that. What they currently mostly claim themselves is in line with wind/solar, but given their usual lies, that clearly is only a lower bound. There are various estimates not from the nuclear industry, up to and including some that say that nuclear is in line with fossiles if you do it honestly. I do not think the latter are credible either. My conclus

        • Re:There is no emission free electricity (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sonlas ( 10282912 ) on Friday December 29, 2023 @06:01AM (#64114159)

          But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry

          We know. It's a conspiracy. But you saw through it all. Glad we have you on our side Q.

          Let's be serious now. You know emissions figures are independantly reported, right? You don't have to get your information from fake news conspiracy websites.

          That is a TCO-type argument though and likely too complex for most people.

          The irony of calling TCO complex, while your own reasoning is only about cost. You oversimplify by quite a stretch if you think this is only about throwing money at the problem. In the real world, you need to take other factors into consideration: mining resources, manufacturing capabilities, deployment capabilities, storage, parallelization of deployment. THIS is complex. Not your pseudo-bullshit about TCO because you read about a three-letter acronym somewhere on the internet.

          Fortunately for us, people actually making descisions base them on facts and actual decision-making processes. Which is why most sensible countries are targetting a mix of nuclear, solar, wind, hydro and storage for their electricity generation.

          And that we seem to be unable to reduce significantly, with "safe levels" already being out of reach.

          Worldwide, you are right.
          Some countries are within the "safe levels" margins though, maybe we could take a hint about how they did it:
          - Sweden/Quebec (I know, not a country, but big enough): lots of hydro potential, perfect
          - Uruguay: slightly less hydro potential, with a mix of solar/wind, next kind of perfect
          - France/Norway: even less but still some hydro, complemented with nuclear/solar/wind

          On the other hand, we have countries that have failed:
          - Germany: closed its few nuclear plants, invested massively on only solar/wind, the 2nd biggest CO2 emitter in EU. Still burning a lot of coal/gas.
          - Poland/China: late to the party, building nuclear/solar/wind, but still burning too much coal/gas
          - US: failing to build nuclear plants in recent decades, letting China lead the way. Still burning a lot of coal/gas

          With too many people still hallucinating that there is no problem or that we can still easily make 1.5C, I am not hopeful.

          With too many people still hallucinating that there is no problem in not including nuclear in the list of technologies to help us reduce emissions, I am not hopeful.

          You are part of the problem. What about you start being part of the solution?

          • US type fission nuclear is terrible. Always has been. Not economical, not sustainable. Propped up by gov't spending.

            Also absolutely necessary in the fight against CO2 effects for the time being.

            Shame we didn't really push thorium/molten salts a few decades ago. They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.

            • Shame we didn't really push thorium/molten salts a few decades ago. They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.

              Indeed. The sad part is that we are letting our (economic) ennemy, China, lead the way, and there is a high probability that they will end up selling us that technology in the long term... When did the US stop innovating and being the leader it was supposed to be? Or better question: why?

              • corporate interests aren't aligned with long term progress.

                We've sold the US the bill of goods that 'capitalism' is a system unto itself when it's actually just one side of a ledger. Corporations that exist solely to *exist* and extract money are monopolies waiting for an opportunity to become one.

                We need the strong thorough regulation of gov't to ensure they do give back (taxes) and work towards societal goals instead of self interest.

            • They still might be a solution or minimization to the unsolved nuclear waste issue we have.

              We really don't have an unsolved nuclear waste problem. We know exactly what the solution is -- reprocessing -- we just haven't wanted to implement it.

              • Which has all sorts of bad outcomes. Less but more dangerous waste no? and of course plutonium.

                solves one problem, creates another.

                • Less but more dangerous waste no?

                  In terms of storage, no. Reprocessed and re-burned fuel is much easier to deal with because it's more radioactive, which means that it decays to a safe level faster. You only have to store it safely for less than 200 years, which is non-trivial but manageable, unlike waste that needs to be kept safe for almost-geologic timeframes.

                  and of course plutonium.

                  Yes, that's a real issue. Though it's manageable with careful tracking and good security. It's not like we don't already manage non-trivial amounts of the stuff. Also, the French

                  • I'm not arguing it's not possible. I'm just saying it's just not worth the inherent risks when other far less dangerous options exist or will exist within a couple decades. There may be particular edge case scenarios where it's advantages outweigh it's problems - such as aircraft carriers, subs, and places where renewables can't really work etc.

                    Nuclear in some fashion is def required for the next 1-3 decades.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "No. But I have stopped trusting anything the nuclear industry claims about itself over the years."

          Ah, so you're a scientist.

          "Lying about it does not help, which is my argument here."

          And a point you are demonstrating well by lying yourself.

      • For figures on emissions, it's in IPCC reports on energy production. Easy to Google.
    • Yes, there are emissions associated with renewables. If you look at Orsted (primarily wind in the North Sea) it produces fairly detailed breakdowns of associated emissions such as for maintenance ships, office workers, etc. Nuclear also has associated carbon emissions.
      • IPCC reports provide a summary with ranges for g/CO2e per kWh for most generation types (around two dozen).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        These are details that are only useful so that pencil-heads can argue that they are right.

        Emissions from energy generation that are of concern are scalable emissions, not fixed emissions. All you are listing are fixed emissions. Office workers, LOL.

        "Emission free" is meaningless anyway. Climate problems will not be solved by arguing over epsilon and then jacking off over winning that argument.

    • yeah Nuclear is good on one single metric. CO2 emissions. That's literally it. lol

      We absolutely need it for another decade or two, though renewables and storage advancements are shaving that time every year.
      • Nuclear has the advantage that it is not as dependent on weather conditions for production. If production from renewables is low then it may be able to provide some reliable power in the context of demand management (most grids do this already), trading or storage.
        • coal already does this just fine. Nuclear is only useful for baseload CO2 free(ish) power. And only for a decade or two until renewable and storage catch up.

          By literally every metric it's one of the worst options. Wildly expensive, wildly long time to deploy, risks like nothing else and the problem of waste that needs to be stored for literally longer than organized human society has existed.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            coal already does this just fine.

            But with high CO2 emissions.

            • yes, the (sole) advantage of nuclear is the lack of them. Not that it can provide baseload.

              You're post said the selling point of nuclear was it's baseload/non weather dependent capability.

              We have something that can do that, it's coal. What nuclear provides is that baseload ability without the CO2 release. Hence my point. It's only positive metric is it's lack of CO2 release.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                yes, the (sole) advantage of nuclear is the lack of them. Not that it can provide baseload. You're post said the selling point of nuclear was it's baseload/non weather dependent capability.

                You might want to read it in the context of what I also noted in terms of carbon emission intensity. I'd taken as read we'd be looking at low carbon emission not high carbon emission sources. Apologies if I didn't make that crystal clear. We'd be mad to keep any coal around, though, if there is any chance of ditching it.

                • Coal is going away, not even because of CO2 but literally just on cost. It's cheaper to install a new industrial solar plant from scratch than to simply run an existing coal plant in most cases here in the states.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                    Yes, thankfully coal is going to go. The sooner that transition is done the better. Its 99% done in the UK.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      You assume the goal is "emission free" when it is not either. If you're going to be pedantic, you should be judged by your own standard.

      Also, since you're so interesting in pedantry, it is interesting that you aren't precisely defining emissions here. Just what is the agenda?

    • You are being unnecessary pedantic. And just for the record nuclear energy has among the lowest life time emissions per kWh. The antinuclear movement has lied repeatedly for decades. Nuclear is clean. That's the entire point. Why do Germans love sucking coal fumes?

    • They just ignore manufacturing and maintenance and arrive at "magic!"

      This is how you know you're dealing with liars.

      "The whole truth and nothing but the truth."

  • So we're back at square 1? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Thursday December 28, 2023 @11:13PM (#64113729) Homepage Journal

    I remember that a few decades ago we were roughly 20% nuclear and 20% hydro, so 40% carbon free would just be returning to those days.

    On the other hand, we've replaced a lot of coal from back then with natural gas(proportionally, we also generate a lot more power), so averaged out we're actually substantially lower for carbon dioxide per kWh.

    Just keep in mind that, well, we tend to get the low hanging fruit first. After a point, continuing to increase wind and solar even more will become more complicated, and thus expensive. Increasing the proportion of nuclear would help, as would spreading and improving the ability for EVs to function as load leveling devices (IE not charging during high demand/low production periods, or maybe even returning electricity to the grid). The development and spread of, well, building/house level UPS systems that are smart enough to charge when power is cheap (IE demand low/production high) would help as well. From what I've read, sodium-ion might be good for this - it doesn't have the weight advantage of lithium-ion, but it's substantially cheaper per kWh, and isn't significantly less dense, volume wise.

    But all the above is expensive to do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smap77 ( 1022907 )

      Even if we were at square 1 (we aren't), we'd now be running in the opposite direction. Try not to be too nihilistic?

      Keep in mind the actual cost curves we see. Solar and wind are certainly still seeing decreasing cost/kWh.

      What's more expensive to do is to dig up carbon, sewer the emissions into the atmosphere, and then think that there are somehow cost savings now or in the future.

      • Keep in mind the actual cost curves we see. Solar and wind are certainly still seeing decreasing cost/kWh.

        While solar and wind may keep getting cheaper, they are likely to plateau sooner or later, with gains becoming marginal once economy of scale is reached.

        Also, keep in mind that I expanded from just the generation, and started focusing on the adaptations required for high levels of solar/wind, especially in a grid that is effectively 0% hydrocarbon based. At that point you need to supply massive amounts of dispatchable power, as well as be able to shed demand to a large extent.

        These are the modifications th

        • Currently nuclear is increasing in cost and plots of wind costs don't show any significant flattening so far. Grid adaptation costing is difficult as there are continuous upgrades ongoing and so some core upgrades to support a particular balance of generation types may have no additional price tag. Linking generation in might, and storage will. The amount of storage required is not a trivial question to answer as although there is a theoretical possibility of a lull in wind for three months it is vanishingl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In the UK some suppliers are paying users to reduce their consumption at peak times, and offering very low rates when demand is low.

      It's proven to be popular, the only down side being that it favours people who can afford large batteries and home EV charging. But that's the UK for your, the less well off always get left out.

      90% renewables is easy and cheap. It gets more expensive beyond that point, but the cost is more than offset by the very low cost of renewable energy.

      • Economy Seven has been doing this for about 50 years.

      • In the UK some suppliers are paying users to reduce their consumption at peak times, and offering very low rates when demand is low.

        After establishment of a market for electricity supply in the UK, there have been times where the price, at the wholesale level, has gone negative.

    • > I remember that a few decades ago we were roughly 20% nuclear and 20% hydro,

      No, you don't, because that was never the case in the United States in the entire history of electrification. Even at its peak circa 2008, Nuclear + ALL renewables was under 30%. I remember back in 2008-2009 when EVs were first hitting the mass market with the LEAF, and having these discussions about "coal fired cars" because the US grid was still about 50% coal.

      20% Nuclear + 20% hydro? Never happened [eia.gov].
      =Smidge=

  • More Emissions not Less (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Thursday December 28, 2023 @11:29PM (#64113741)
    Lets be clear, what the data actually shows is that we are using increasing amounts of electricity and most of the increased demand is being met by burning natural gas. Rather than fewer emissions from shifting to electricity, the immediate effect is increased demand that is met by burning fossil fuel. In most places, there simply are no unused emission free sources of electricity to meet the increased demand. We need to focus our climate change efforts on reducing consumption and replacing fossil fuels in the electric grid to replace fossil fuels for current demand. Instead we are encouraging increases in demand which exceed the new procution of emission free power.

    • You will not reduce consumption. Change your goals.

      • Re: More Emissions not Less (Score:4, Informative)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 ) on Friday December 29, 2023 @03:36AM (#64114019)
        Consumption reduction is indeed possible (UK figures here as a demonstration. "Consumption per capita has shrunk by almost a third since 2000, bringing it to 2.3 toe in 2022. Electricity consumption per capita dropped by more than 20%, from 5 800 kWh in 2000 to 4 200 kWh in 2022. In 2022, energy consumption at normal climate decreased by almost 5% to 153 Mtoe, after a 3% increase in 2021." https://www.enerdata.net/estor... [enerdata.net].
        • That trend in the UK is going to reverse as transportation and heating moves to electricity.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            That trend in the UK is going to reverse as transportation and heating moves to electricity.

            It will. Overall energy use will likely decline but change source.

    • hardly:

      https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

    • "the data actually shows is that we are using increasing amounts of electricity"

      The data does not show that. Electricity consumption in the US reached a plateau in 2011. Electricity from fossil fuels has been declining for years. Even NG production has declined as a percentage of the total.

    • Nobody won an election by advocating reduced consumption

  • That's an increase from ~30% -> ~40% in 1 year in spite of the legacy, Earth polluting, private property oil spillers and "clean coal" liars who bought a number of American politicians like Manchin.

    • Bernie votes against gun control because that's what his voters want. Manchin votes a pro-coal position because that's what HIS voters want. Sadly that's how politics works - at least in a functioning democracy...

  • According to TFS, renewable electricity share is 40% but according to IRENA (2022) it's 20% (hydro, wind, biomass, solar, & geothermal). I very much doubt that it's jumped 20% in one year so why the discrepancy? How are they defining & counting "emissions free"?

    IRENA https://www.irena.org/ [irena.org] puts the USA at 126th out of the 224 countries it monitors. The USA has a poorer renewables share than Russia, Mexico, & Venezuela.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cirby ( 2599 )

      The article danced around that part, but the 20% or so they left out was nuclear.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      If you are going to quote statistics, why don't you provide a link so that we can verify them? Let's see that IRENA 2022 report for the US.

      'How are they defining & counting "emissions free"?'

      Is that a rhetorical question? Or are you pushing a narrative? Are you suggesting they are defining away huge discrepancies, discrepancies you claim exist without attribution? It's very clear how they are getting their 40% number, now let's see how you're getting your 20% one.

  • We are failing. We need more low emissions sources such as nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal. And this doesn't even get to emissions from transportation, industry, agriculture and heating.
    • Totally agree. There is, sadly, a long way to go to achieve this in an equitable way whilst also ensuring good living standards. It's part of why I think insulation retrofits and building codes are going to be important as they can reduce the requirement for energy (and by implication dirty energy) and also improve living standards by smoothing out home temperature variations. We managed to deal with one of the low-hanging if smaller fruit, lighting, without the world ending, and I'm happy to not have to ch
  • China has increased their emissions by more than the difference in the last 3 years.
  • Coal can produce 100% of USA energy needs 100% of the time. Wind and solar can produce 15% of USA energy needs 25% of the time. Catch the difference, Bosco. Wind & solar peak-out at a small fraction of needed energy a small fraction of the time. In Detroit they would not electrophy a shoe-shine booth. They are like "energetic? hobbies for green-beanerz and Pussyville pouterz. Best return to coal ( if not nuc ) to match my VROOOOOM Dodge HellKat rolling up the wispy-wristde

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