But here’s the problem: Support is dropping precipitously among Republicans, who at one point viewed clean energy nearly as favorably as Democrats did. Meanwhile, Republicans are growing fonder of fossil fuels, the survey found. The place where respondents from the two parties are most aligned? Nuclear power.
These days, when the U.S. builds a new power project, you can go ahead and assume it’s a solar, battery, or wind installation.
Yes, the U.S. is still building some new fossil gas power plants — and yes, utilities nationwide are trying to build a lot more of them — but 97 percent of new capacity set to come online this year is carbon-free, per a U.S. Energy Information Administration report in August.
The U.S. may be building a lot of clean energy, but it could be building way more if only the grid could expand quickly enough.
An enormous number of energy projects — 2.6 terawatts’ worth, or an amount roughly double the size of the existing U.S. grid’s capacity — are making their way through the series of steps required to plug into the grid. Almost all of this backlog, known as the interconnection queue, consists of solar, wind, and battery projects.
If the U.S. can figure out how to build transmission lines more rapidly and reform the interconnection process, clean energy will move that much faster. That’s a big if.
The initial data on grid battery installations in the first quarter of the year sent a signal: 2024 would be a breakout year for the maturing clean energy source.
Installations were up 84 percent compared to a year prior, led by battery juggernauts California and Texas, both of which have by now installed enough renewables to make grid batteries a no-brainer. When the full-year data comes in, it’s possible the U.S. will have doubled its grid battery fleet in this year alone.
The progress the U.S. has made on decarbonization over the last few years, including the country’s seemingly unstoppable pace of clean energy installation, is about to face a major test in the second Trump administration.
Though it remains highly uncertain how exactly Trump and Congressional Republicans will aim to water down the Biden Administration’s climate policies — most notably the Inflation Reduction Act — it’s certain that the President-elect will weaken rather than strengthen federal climate policy.
In the worst case scenario, meaning a full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, the second Trump administration could cause an extra 4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to pour into the atmosphere. Experts think that exact scenario is unlikely, but for now it’s all just informed guesswork.
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