The United States is making significant clean energy advances, and well over half of the population now lives in states with climate pollution reduction targets, but the expansion of fracked gas and oil infrastructure threatens to derail America’s climate progress by locking in the use of fossil fuels, according to the 7th Annual Energy Report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council today. “The latest U.S. energy trends highlight both the clean energy-sector opportunities and the challenges facing America,” said report author Amanda Levin, a policy analyst with NRDC’s Climate and Clean Energy Program. “Solar and wind energy are thriving, coal-fired generation has sunk to a four-decade low, electric vehicles and grid energy storage are emerging as cleaner mainstream options, and 25 states now have greenhouse gas-reduction targets.”
However, NRDC’s seventh annual energy report, Clean Energy Opportunities and Dirty Energy Challenges, also shows that oil and gas are on the rise – along with their emissions.
The report also shows the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy-sector projections of 10 years ago were substantially off the mark. For example, wind and solar generation capacity is four times greater; coal consumption is 47 percent lower; oil production is 69 percent higher; and gas consumption is 27 percent more than predicted a decade ago.
