PORTUGAL GENERATES A SURPLUS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY -- WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Portugal, home to 10 million people, surged to the front of the pack in terms of renewable energy in March of this year. Using a combination of hydro, wind and solar generation, it produced more than enough electricity to power its 3.6 million households, plus businesses, industry and transport. It exported a surplus of 4.8 percent of its electricity--878 gigawatt-hours--to other European countries.

Portugal's use of renewable energy in March kept 1.8 million tons of climate-destabilizing CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Many other countries, including Sweden, Costa Rica and Germany, are moving rapidly towards meeting all or most of their power needs with renewables. You can read about Scotland's successes here.

Portugal's Alto Minho Wind Farm Under Construction

Credit: BBC News

Portugal's per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is $30,300 per year, just about half that of the United States ($59,500). If they can do it, why can't we?

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EUROPE COMMITS TO 100 PERCENT CLEAN ELECTRICITY BY 2050

This is just a quicklink to a remarkable piece of news.

Eurelectric, the body that represents 3,500 of Europe's electric companies, has now committed to carbon-neutral generation of all of Europe's electricity by 2050 or before. They point out that this is a win-win decision, since electricity from wind and solar is rapidly becoming cheaper than electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, and of course pumps far less climate-destabilizing methane and CO2 into the atmosphere.

Wind farm in Romania, 2011
Credit: Sandri Alexandra

Given America's seemingly unbreakable, politically driven addiction to fossil fuels, the reporter's final comment is remarkably restrained:

"It is refreshing to see a regional commitment to clean electricity in Europe. Industry leaders in the US would do well to study the European approach and adjust their thinking accordingly."

Duh!

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GO WIND, YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN

In 1865, American author and editor Horace Greeley cribbed an earlier journalist's phrase and famously wrote, "Go West, young man . . . go West and grow up with the country."

The same advice could certainly be given today with respect not to the long-closed American Frontier, but to the worldwide, opportunity-filled frontier of renewable energy--energy from the wind, the sun, the tides and other natural, non-polluting sources.

Workers prepare to hoist the blades of a giant wind turbine

Credit: National Wind Technology Center/energy.gov

In the first three months of 2017, a new wind turbine was commissioned every 2.4 hours somewhere in the US. Not surprisingly, that kind of growth requires lots of workers. The US wind industry employed 51,000 people in 2013 and doubled to 102,000 just three years later. Writing in Inside Climate News, journalist Paul Horn notes that just the growth in wind-industry employment in those three years equals the total employment in the US coal industry.

Solar energy is another area enjoying explosive employment growth--17 times the national employment growth rate, according to the same source. Solar energy now employs more than 260,000 people in the US, up 82 percent over the past three years.

According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, the US renewable energy sector as a whole employed nearly 3.4 million workers at the end of 2016. That's more than all the jobs in the entire fossil-fuel sector, and is grew an astonishing 18 percent between 2015 and 2016.

And all those jobs are producing remarkable results. The US Department of Energy reports that just under 20% of US electricity came from renewables in 2016, pretty much wiping out all predictions.

To borrow a term popularized by Newt Gingrich, it's pathetic to compare renewable energy to the moribund coal industry that President Trump promises to resuscitate. In the US, coal has shed 60,000 jobs over the last five years. (However, and kudos to Trump, it will gain 70 to 100 jobs when the Acosta Coal Mine, in Pennsylvania, opens on June 8. So revise that to minus 59,900.

Business Insider points out that the growth in clean energy in the US is part of a worldwide explosion in renewable energy, a tidal wave of change that now seems inevitable now that the cost of clean renewable energy has fallen below that of polluting, climate-threatening fossil fuels. Even with President Trump and EPA head Pruitt trying to return the US to the carboniferous era, the economics will win out.

Business Insider quotes Liz Delaney, Program Director at EDF Climate Corps, who concludes:

"Our findings would lead us to believe that the right place to invest dollars are in renewable energy rather than fossil fuels," Delaney says. "These jobs are widely geographically distributed, they're high paying, they apply to both manufacturing and professional workers, and there are a lot of them."

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WANT TO SAVE 52,000 AMERICAN LIVES PER YEAR? REPLACE COAL WITH SOLAR!

Burning coal is a dirty business.  A new study makes it clear just how dirty it is, and how many lives could be saved by generating our electricity from the sun instead.

Coal-fired power plant

(CC0 Public Domain)

In research published in the peer-reviewed journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, materials engineer Joshua Pearce and energy policy specialist Emily Prehoda quantify the number of American lives lost every year from respiratory, cardiac and other illnesses caused by pollution from burning coal. It turns out to be a shocking 52,000 lives. That's more than the number killed in car crashes (about 35,000 in recent years) and by firearms (around 12,000 per year) combined.

Pearce and Prehoda arrived at their estimate by comparing coal burning and mortality rates geographically. They found a strong correlation between rates of illness and death and proximity to coal-fired electrical plants. On average, they calculated, there's one additional death from the production of 25 million kilowatt-hours of electricity from coal. Across the US, that means that 52,000 people die every year from coal-caused air pollution.

The researchers point out that with current off-the-shelf technologies, we could generate all the electricity we need from the sun. They also examine the potential health risks from manufacturing and transporting solar panels. These turn out to be a minute fraction of the risks from coal.

It's of course true that replacing all the electricity currently generated by burning coal with solar energy would be a costly investment--about $1,000,000 for every life saved.

However, the authors point out, that doesn't count the economic value of the electricity generated. In many regions, solar energy is already cheaper than electricity from coal or other fossil fuels, and the price of solar energy is continuing to fall rapidly. (Note: wind power is even cheaper). When the monetary savings from generating our power from solar rather than coal are factored in, in most cases switching to solar saves money as well as lives.

"Unlike other public health investments, you get more than lives saved," says Pearce. "In addition to saving lives, solar is producing electricity, which has economic value."

The bottom line--the sooner and faster we make the transition from coal and other fossil fuels to solar and other renewable energy sources the better, for our health, our lives, and our pocketbooks.

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BLOWIN' IN THE WIND--WIND POWER NOW EMPLOYS 102,000 AMERICANS, POWERS 24 MILLION HOMES

Wind power is is soaring worldwide, and the U.S. is no exception. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) just published its annual report, with great news for anyone who loves clean, renewable energy, and the jobs it produces.

Green Mountain Wind Farm near Fluvanna, Texas

Credit: Leaflet/Wikimedia Commons

A few of the milestones reached in 2016:

--15,000 new jobs, bringing the total U.S. wind-power employment to 102,000. Compare that to the 50,500 employed in coal mining at the end of 2016, down from 70,000 in 2003 to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing. And, points out Tom Kiernan, the CEO of  AWEA, since 99% of wind farms are located in rural areas, they are providing jobs and land-leasing income where they are most needed.

--Even though hydropower has been a key part of the U.S. energy system since the early 1900s, windpower edged it out in 2016, and now accounts for 5.5% of the electric power generated in the U.S.

--That's enough to power 24 million homes.

--Wind power is especially important across the midwest--both in terms of energy production and jobs. Wind accounts for between one-fifth and one-third of power production in 7 great-plains states. You can get a sense of this below:

Source: https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2014/12/

--The wind power industry is also boosting much-needed manufacturing jobs, especially in the rust belt. More than 25,000 men and women are working in 500 U.S. factories manufacturing parts for the giant wind turbines that are harvesting wind energy more and more efficiently.

--Even without subsidies, in many areas of the United States and the rest of the world, wind power is now the cheapest way to generate electricity.

This news is another great example of how moving to a sustainable energy system as fast as possible is a win-win solution for people and the planet.

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GREAT SCOT! IN MARCH, WIND POWER ALONE EXCEEDED THE NEEDS OF EVERY HOME IN SCOTLAND

While the U.S. government remains mired in climate-change denial, and hopes to boost employment by deregulating the moribund coal-mining industry, other countries are forging into the future by boosting their alternative-energy infrastructure.

One such success story is Scotland, part of the United Kingdom and home to 5.3 million people. In March, their rapidly growing wind farms generated more than 1.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power all 2.4 million Scottish households with plenty of energy left over. At a current value of around 100 British Pounds ($123 dollars) per megawatt hour, that wind-produced, carbon-free power was worth about $150 million dollars.

Scottish windfarm

Credit: Rosser1954-English Wikipedia

It's well known that the alternative energy industry produces a lot of jobs, so it's not surprising that the wind power industry has put thousands of Scots to work, along with millions worldwide.

It's also striking how quickly a country can increase its capacity to generate alternative energy. The figures for March, 2017 in Scotland represent an 81% increase over March of 2016.

Lang Banks, the director of WWF in Scotland, summarizes:

“As well as helping to power our homes and businesses, wind power supports thousands of jobs and continues to play an important role in Scotland’s efforts to address global climate change by avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon emissions every year.”

So let me get this straight. An entire country can generate all the power it needs, at a competitive price, put a lot of people to work, maintain a very high standard of living and help protect all of us from climate disruption.  Sounds like a win-win solution to me.

At the same time, our current leader doesn't like the way wind turbines look, has put a climate-change denier, Scott Pruitt, in charge of the EPA, and another one, Rick Perry, in charge of the Department of Energy. While other countries are rapidly advancing towards what seems to be an inevitable and highly desirable clean-energy future, we seem to be retreating into a coal-and-oil fueled past.

Syncrude Aurora oil sands mine, Canada

Credit: Elias Schewel

What's wrong with this picture?

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GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE--HOLLAND'S TRAINS NOW RUN 100% ON RENEWABLE ENERGY

While the US marches ever deeper into the swamp of climate-change denial, led by Donald Trump and his appointees, much of the rest of the world is surging ahead into a sustainable future.

One case in point--since January 1 of this year, every train in Holland has been running on 100% renewable energy, almost all of it generated by wind. Dutch trains carry 438 million passengers and haul 36.5 million tons of freight every year.

Dutch train, now 100% wind-powered/Credit I, Maurits90

This remarkable accomplishment only took two years, starting with an agreement between the train companies and energy company ENENCO in 2015. The goal was 100% renewable energy by 2018, but the project was completed a year early, in part because of the early completion of wind farms in the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.

While Trump rails against wind energy, seemingly because it offends him to see the turbines from his Scottish golf course, the Dutch, who have a long tradition of windmills, don't seem to mind at all. Especially when they know that they are doing their best to fight climate change and, of particular threat to them, rising sea levels.

Dutch windmills--old and new--Eemshaven, the Netherlands
Credit Wikipedia