Inside Climate News has a report on last week’s release of 2019 energy production data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency. The report shows that solar and wind have increased, but we still need to do much better.
Solar energy production has almost quadrupled in the last 5 years, from 29,000 GWH in 2014 to 107,000 GWH in 2019. North Carolina is now one of the major states for solar energy production, increasing from 800 to 7,600 GWH from 2014-2019, an almost 10 fold increase. North Carolina is now 3rd behind California and Arizona in state solar energy production. Wind energy increased by about 50% for the same time period, from 182,000 to 300,000 GWH.
Coal is continuing to decline, but natural gas increased slightly. While natural gas power plants don’t make as much air pollution, they still contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases and natural gas production releases lots of greenhouse gases during production.
Since 2001, fossil fuel energy production remained about the same, decreasing slightly from 2,680,000 GWH to 2,580,000 GWH. As you can see, fossil fuels still account for 8 times as much energy production as solar and wind.
This report shows we have improved some, but have lots more to do. Way to go, North Carolina for showing such dramatic increases in solar!
