Less than three weeks after the urgent warning from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the world may have as few as 12 years to stave off the worst of climate change, America’s Climate Crossroads: Pushing Clean Energy Higher & Faster notes the nation made huge clean energy strides in the past year and a half and far outpaced the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) 2007 predictions for 2017 energy use. However, the country is not yet on track to meet the IPCC’s climate targets.
The U.S. power industry has seen a remarkable shift as nuclear and coal struggles to compete with energy efficiency, renewable energy resources, cheap fracked gas, and the rising need for a more flexible energy system.
Renewables now account for 16 percent of U.S. power generation, a substantial increase even from 2016 levels, when renewable energy provided 14 percent of U.S. power. More than half of that—8.1 percent—came from wind and
solar, with most of the rest from hydropower (See Figure above).
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