Why are we building any new natural gas pipelines when solar and wind have already won the world? Plus solar and wind don’t frack, don’t need any fuel, don’t require eminent domain, and don’t suck up any cooling water.

Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, 19 August 2015, World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables,

Electricity generation from renewable sources has overtaken natural gas to become the second largest source of electricity worldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has announced.

Coal is still #1, but not for long.

iea, 6 August 2015, Renewable electricity generation climbs to second place after coal: Growth driven by wind and solar,

The growth in non-hydro renewable electricity was driven by solar and wind. In 2014, solar photovoltaic overtook solid biofuels to become the second largest source of non-hydro renewable electricity in OECD Europe, with a share of 17.3%. Since 1990, solar photovoltaic has been increasing at an average growth rate of 44.6% per year, and wind at 27.1% per year.

Even 44.6% per year is more than doubling every two years, and in more recent years, the U.S. solar growth rate is more like 65% per year.

In this graph, solar PV is the gold line bursting up since 2010, and wind is the gray line up tp since 2000.

We know how to power the whole world on sun, wind, and water, and nothing else. Here’s the plan for the U.S. to get there 25% by 2025, 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035, and 100% by 2040. Maybe if we keep using Perseus’ mirror-shield of truth, the world will see the pipeline Medusa as the monster it is and we’ll do all this even faster.

Medusa bronze statuette © Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation

The clean renewable energy future has already begun; let’s go forward, not frack.

-jsq

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