{"id":6559,"date":"2016-01-07T08:46:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T08:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6559"},"modified":"2016-01-07T08:46:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T08:46:55","slug":"the-usas-difficult-energy-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/01\/07\/the-usas-difficult-energy-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"The USA's difficult energy transition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE <a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=2841&amp;action=edit\">blog<\/a> has commented on a Washington Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/graphics\/national\/power-plants\/\">article<\/a> which shows the proportion of electricity generated from different sources in the USA. \u00a0There is an interactive map which shows the amount of electricity generated in each State for the first 5 months of 2015, and the proportion coming from different sources. \u00a0The differences are huge.<\/p>\n<p>For example, in Washington, 37 GWHrs of the 47GWHr total come from Hydro, whereas in Indiana, 33 GWHr of the 41GWHr total comes from Coal.<\/p>\n<p>There is also data on particular fuels. \u00a0Here are two:<\/p>\n<p>There are\u00a0511\u00a0coal-powered electric plants in the U.S. \u00a0They have generated\u00a034 percent\u00a0of the nation\u2019s electricity this year.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The leading fuel for electricity generation in the country, coal is most popular in the Midwest, Appalachia and the East Coast, but is also the primary source in Wyoming, Utah, Montana and Arizona. It generated the vast majority of the nation\u2019s electricity in the late 1980s but now creates one-third with natural gas gaining steadily. Coal is the chief source of electricity in 22 states and creates a majority of the electrical power in 14 states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are\u00a0843\u00a0wind-powered electric plants in the U.S. They have generated\u00a05 percent\u00a0of the nation\u2019s electricity this year.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Wind is the fastest growing source, finding a home in the Great Plains where wind blows reliably across wide open spaces. Iowa and South Dakota get one third of their power from wind, followed by Kansas, Vermont and North Dakota.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The NAEE blog makes the point that making the transition from the present, where coal and gas dominate, to a carbon-neutral generation (as promised at Paris) will not be easy, or fast. \u00a0Just as it will not be here. \u00a0The blog post ends:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\"In the UK, we have a different mix of sources, but the same problem. \u00a0The heart of the dilemma is that it is not possible to fix this problem just by building renewable sources, although not everyone understand that. \u00a0Great teaching topic though.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed it is; just a pity that so little of it seems to go on.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NAEE blog has commented on a Washington Post article which shows the proportion of electricity generated from different sources in the USA. \u00a0There is an interactive map which shows the amount of electricity generated in each State for the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}