Earlier this month President Obama has announced his country’s strongest move to date on climate change. As IFLScience and many other reported : ” The finalized Clean Power Plan aims to cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. “
This means that coal will go down even more. If you think this is an opinion and not a fact, please consider these two facts :
- 12,300 MW of coal-fired plants capacity will close this year alone in the United States ;
- 200 coal-fired plants closed down for good since 2010 in the United States, that’s 40 percent of the US’s plants
A trend continuation of this shows that yes, Obama’s plan is totally feasible.
- While coal accounts for 42 percent of the electricity in the country, it amounts to almost 75 percent of the greenhouse gases emissions of US electricity.
- Natural gas amounts for 26 percent of the electricity and a similar share of emissions.
- Nuclear and renewables amount for 32 percent of electricity but only 2.5 percent of emissions…
(cf. A look at the carbon emissions of electricity and Wikipedia for the sources. Calculations made by myself…)
If smart utilities keep on helping their customers cut their consumption, if renewables keep on blossoming and sprouting throughout the country, I believe that coal could even entirely be phased off as an energy source in the United States by 2030. This was the subject of a study I blogged about a while back…
If you need further proof and to infer this article, a new study got published stating that wind could replace coal as the first electricity source… The future is bright and cleaner.
Image source : Flickr.
