Just hours after being sworn in, President Joe Biden resubmitted the U.S. to join the Paris Agreement while his administration laid the groundwork for a major climate-change mitigation push including clean energy.
Under the Biden administration, renewable energy resources are expected to deliver 70% of the new generation capacity built this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The U.S. utility sector has also made a dramatic turn toward clean energy bolstered by the economics of renewable energy and by state mandates and corporate demands for carbon reduction.
In the past four years, most major U.S. electric utilities have committed to net-zero or zero-carbon emissions goals, most of them aimed at a 2050 target, and some seeking even more aggressive timelines.
Clean Energy is energy that is produced through methods that do not release greenhouse gases or any other pollutants. Clean energy can be generated from a variety of renewable sources such as solar and air currents.
Although often used interchangeably, the terms Renewable Energy and clean energy are not the same.
Not all renewable energy methods are clean energy. For example, geothermal power is a renewable energy source but some of the ways it can be processed can have a negative impact on the environment.
The benefits of clean energy are that it reduces our reliance on Fossil Fuels and can mitigate climate change.
In the United States, more than a third of emissions are derived from coal and other fossil fuels. Switching to renewable sources would reduce this and could provide as much as 40% of the American energy demand in less than 10 years.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Introduction to Clean Energy, a 2-day workshop style training course that overs the fundamentals of clean energy and innovation to unlock and deploy new zero-carbon technologies for the future.
Participants learn about energy and climate research and innovation, as well as clean and resilient infrastructure and communities.