Solar and Wind Take Center Stage
I just read an article that almost brought tears of joy to my eyes. It said, as of 2024, over ninety five percent of all new electricity installations – both in the world and the US – are renewable energy. This feels like vindication of my career of work in solar and energy conservation.
The news came to me by way of the July 7th issue of The New Yorker, “4.6 billion years on, the Sun is having a moment,” by Bill McKibben. Thank you.
Domestically, California (the world’s fourth largest economy) uses “forty per cent less natural gas to generate electricity than it did in 2023.” And Texas is installing more solar and batteries than California. Under reported but profound advances in large-scale batteries contribute to this success. No longer can pundits credibly say that solar and wind are only marginal resources.
Internationally the story is even more dramatic. China is installing huge amounts of solar power. And it has mastered the art of making cheap solar collectors, batteries and electric vehicles. In the first three months of 2025 “total carbon emissions in China had actually decreased.” And, “In 2024, almost half the automobiles sold in China, which is the world’s largest car market, were full or hybrid electric vehicles.” India almost derailed the Paris Climate Accord of 2015 to protect its coal power. This year “from January through April a surge in solar production [in India] kept the country’s coal use flat and also cut the amount of natural gas used during the same period in 2024 by a quarter.” Poland, another coal producer, “saw renewable power outstrip coal for electric generation in May, thanks to a remarkable surge in solar construction.”
We crew members of Spaceship Earth keep trying things to change the system for the better. Most don’t work all that well. (I was project engineer on two commercial-scale solar systems in the late 1970’s that were torn down within a few years. They were “demonstration projects.”) But gradually – with enough effort, with enough different entities and technologies, for long enough – things CAN shift. It took a LOT of believers, engineers, academics, entrepreneurs and politicians to get us to this point.
“Globally, roughly a third more power is being generated from the sun this spring than last.”
Can the renewable genie be put back in the bottle by the fossil industry and its politicians? They can try in the US – at our expense. But the sun, and now the capacity to use it, is shared worldwide. Renewables aren’t going away any more than using fire, the industrial revolution, or computers.
Bio:
Jon Biemer, a mechanical engineer, worked with the Energy Efficiency Group of Bonneville Power Administration for 23 years. He is author of Our Journey to Sustainability: How Everyday Heroes Make a Difference (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) and Our Environmental Handprints: Recover the Land, Reverse Global Warming, Reclaim the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).