Environmental Engineering Reference
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today a central focus of discussions about clean energy, contributed
less than three gigawat s combined. Looking out to 2020, the modelers
expected wind and solar put together to never top seven gigawat s. h
at
projection was squarely in the mainstream.
Fast-forward to today. In 2010, renewable capacity hit forty-eight
gigawat s, triple the projections of a decade earlier, a trend that can
mostly be chalked up to wind farms like those that had popped up
around West Texas.
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h e pat ern of outperformance is expected to
continue. When the U.S. government released its annual analysis in
late 2012, it projected sixty-i ve gigawat s from wind and solar energy
by 2020, nearly ten times what had been predicted a decade before.
h is assumed no new policies to promote alternative energy. With new
government action, of course, the numbers are likely to clock in even
higher.
h is is all still relatively small potatoes in the context of the U.S.
energy scene. h e United States boasts nearly a thousand gigawat s of
electric-generating capacity; wind and solar are only about 5 percent
of the total. And because the wind doesn't always blow and the sun
doesn't always shine, even this overstates their current contribution;
a bet er measure would put it at somewhere around 2.5 percent.
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But there is another way to look at the situation, and that lens places
new energy technologies in a far more central position. h e U.S.
Department of Energy projected in 2012 that fully three quarters of
net additions to U.S. electric generation in the next decade are likely
to come from renewable power.
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h is was more than it projected for
natural gas, despite the massive growth in shale. And if the U.S. govern-
ment and the states, seized by a desire to confront climate change or
promote new industries, decide to push clean energy more forcefully,
the numbers could outperform even these projections. To be certain,
not everyone agrees, particularly on the precise i gures. One way or
another, though, new sources of clean energy seem poised to play a
large role when it comes to adding new power-generating capacity in
the United States.
h ese gains appear to come at an opportune time. In the wake of
the i nancial crisis of 2008, the United States was looking for new
sources of competitive advantage, and clean energy technology seemed
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