Technology

It is cheaper to operate and that has been it's selling point for the last years.

It's worth pointing out that the renewables break down as such (% of all electricity):

• Solar: 6%
• Hydro: 6%
• Wind: 10%
• Nuclear: 18%

Nuclear energy is providing more than any other individual source, making up 45% of all renewable electricity.

Next time you hear someone "concerned about global warming" also fearmonger about nuclear energy, it's worth considering where their allegiances lie. Most people are misguided, but when it comes to politicians, it says a lot about how much they actually care about sustainability.

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. (It's actually slightly below that level in the October data.) The explosive growth of natural gas in the US has been a big environmental win, since it creates the least particulate pollution of all the fossil fuels, as well as the lowest carbon emissions per unit of electricity. But its use is going to need to start dropping soon if the US is to meet its climate goals, so it will be critical to see whether its growth flat lines over the next few years.

Uh... So, listen. I work in the Nat Gas sector. And while I'm happy to confirm that its far cleaner, easier/safer to transport, and more efficient than coal and liquid oil, I'm going to have to pump the breaks on the enthusiasm. We are definitely not "emissions-free". One of the larger investments we've made, in the last few years, has been in detecting gas leaks along our existing lines and plugging them. And we definitely still flare off excess and lose reserves during transit as circumstances dictate.

Way back in the 1970s a small upstart energy company known as Exxon had one of its engineering departments estimate the ecological impact of drilling into the East Natuna gas field off the coast of Indonesia. This was primarily a natural gas reserve, accessible without the modern fracking and cracking techniques used throughout the Permian and Delphi Basins.

Senior scientist of Exxon, James Black, authored a report estimating the impact of drilling and burning off the fuel in the East Natuna reserve, and concluded it would result in a significant increase in global temperatures. This lead Exxon to commission further studies, in the late 70s and early 80s, to estimate the full impact of their drilling and refining practices. The end result was a model of climate change that has mapped neatly to current climate trends

I say this because while natural gas is relatively cleaner, it is by no means clean. And with the increasing rate of energy consumption occurring globally, our reliance on natural gas is decidedly not contributing to an emissions free future.

This is economics now, not politics. US can go full crazy Trump, but the grid will just keep getting greener as greener is cheapest. He can rant and rave about global warming being a conspiracy or anything else, but it's unstoppable now.

That's a very cool article, I didn't know the US was actually making the change so quickly.

Weirdest part of the article is the included pie chart from the US Energy Information Agency showing the usage of different types of energy, but the entire pie is orange, like every slice of different energy is orange.

They need one art guy, just one.

Hmmm... This pie needs more nuclear.

Wait really, no joke??

It's better than nothing. Hopefully we can speed this up in next couple of years.

This makes electric cars less polluting with every passing day as this percentage increases.

That’s actually better than I thought.

In my city they had everyone switch to renewable energy, they sent Mail out stating that your energy source will automatically change unless you opt out.

Great except the military pollutes more than 140 countries and there are several wars ongoing. If you really want the climate to stop changing we need to reel in the international shipping industry, the fashion industry, and also the global war machine.

Finally some good news.

That's very surprising, in a good way.