The political wind may blow from another direction, but renewables keep breaking records in the US

For the first time ever, wind and solarpower made up over 10% of all energy production in the U.S.A.

Last March, the large amount of wind and solarpower production made up about 10% of the total energyproduction of the United States. Watch the video below.

To be exact, no less than 10.1% of the total energyproduction came from wind and solarpower.

Solarpower made up about 2% while wind energy totalled at about 8%. These two sources have been growing rapidly the past years. While they didn’t hit 4% in 2012, in 2015 they accounted for 6.1% of the energy, 2016, 7.6% and now a full 10%.

Source: PV Magazine USA

More Renewable Sources

Counting the hydro energy from a wet source on the West Coast, the biomass and geothermic energy, energy production from renewable sources totalled in March about 24% of all energy production in the US in March.

Some states significantly raise the average of the renewable energy production. In the sunshine state California, solar power makes up about 20% of the toal energy production. But Texas too, raised the average with 13% of the toal being solar power.

Thanks to the increasingly growing wind and solar power production, this percentage will likely be higher each year.

China Leads

Few places have more heavily polluted air than China, which now motivates the country to its best to produce renewable energysources.

Every hour a new windturbine is placed and  enough solarpanels are produced to fill a soccerfield. 

Thanks to these high production levels, China has changed the economics of renewable energy globally. This has caused solar power to be cost competetive with many fossil fuels among which gas and even coal.

Source: National Geographic 

We’re not there yet…

But thanks to the exponential growth in the renewable energy sector, a future in which our power comes from renewable sources is nog longer just a utopia but a real possibility.

There are a couple of countries who already run almost entrirely on renewables;

Iceland gets all of its power from renewable source: Hydrowpower accounts for two-thirds and the Islands volcanos provide it with geothermal renewale energy.

Costa Rica has been running on (100%) renewable energy from the start of 2015. Wind and solar, hydrowpower and geothermal power are all looked into to become carbon neutral within the next six year as well.

The Caribbean island Bonaire only has 14,500 residents, so the 12 windturbine it houses, generate almost all of its power. The focus now lies on developing a system to create biofuel from local algae.

When we all work together in choosing green, renewable energy, we force a further change in the present market and steer the sector in the right direction.