I gotta say I have mixed feelings about this:
Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced Monday. ...
Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%.
On the one hand, renewables are an exciting and necessary technology. As we've argued elsewhere, renewables overall are not quite ready for prime time. They still have a long way to go before they can reliably produce cheap, dependable, abundant energy. But they are most certainly the future of energy generation and it's good to see the technology progressing.
On the other hand: While we used a record number of renewables last year, and every time you got your energy bill it was like a little essay in heartache.
"I'm happy to see we've crossed that threshold, but that is only a step in what has to be a very rapid and much cheaper journey," said Stephen Porder, a professor of ecology and assistant provost for sustainability at Brown University.
Anyone remember California last summer?
Keep developing renewables, don't rely on them just yet.
