Yesterday Secretary Clinton unveiled her plan to move us to 33% clean energy by 2030. It’s great news to hear any candidate talking about moving us from fossil fuels to clean energy.
I know that many might dismiss this diary seeing that it comes from me. I’m a total Bernie partisan. But I’m also a huge proponent of renewable energy and am deeply committed to addressing climate change. If you are too, you might find the following elucidating.
- 33% is “enough to power every home”, presumably because 33% of our power is used in homes, but it won’t be powering every home.
- According to EcoWatch, 70% of all new energy that went live between January and July 2015 was renewable:
renewable sources—biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind—accounted for nearly 70 percent (69.75 percent) of new electrical generation placed in service in the U.S. during the first six months of 2015.
- More than 17% of our energy is already coming from renewable sources, and we’re on track to add 1% per year. In 10 years, that would conservatively result in 27% of our energy coming from renewable sources if we just stay the course we’re on. There are other factors, such as the lack of will of oil extractors to suck oil out of the ground when the prices are so low, and the falling price of wind and solar, that will likely result in the market driving the yearly increase even higher.
Renewable energy sources now account for 17.27 percent of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water at 8.61 percent, wind at 5.84 percent, biomass at 1.40 percent, solar at 1.08 percent and geothermal steam at 0.34 percent (for comparison, renewables were 16.28 percent of capacity in June 2014 and 15.81 percent in June 2013).
-
Setting A Goal To Install 300 Megawatts Of Renewable Energy in Federally Subsidized Housing: In the Climate Action Plan, the President set a goal of installing 100 megawatts (MW) of solar and other types of renewable energy in Federally subsidized housing. The Administration has already surpassed that goal, through commitments to install more than 185 MW of renewable energy. Today, we are announcing that the Administration is tripling its current goal and setting a new goal to install 300 MW of renewable energy by 2020, as well as expanding the goal to include community and shared solar installations.
-
Providing Technical Assistance to Make It Easier to Install Solar on Affordable Housing: One of the largest barriers to deploying onsite solar on affordable housing is the lack of knowledge on how to initiate the process. To overcome this barrier, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is announcing that it will offer direct technical assistance to affordable housing organizations making a commitment toward the Administration’s new 300 MW goal. As part of this assistance, HUD is launching a website to provide policy guidance, tools, and other online resources to help advance solar deployment and the installation of other renewable energy in affordable housing.
-
Developing a Toolkit to Increase the Ability of States to Use Federal Funding to Deploy Solar on Affordable Housing: To make it easier to use Section 108 Community Development Block Grant funds for solar energy systems, next month, HUD is releasing a renewable energy toolkit for use by Community Planning and Development (CPD) grantees. The toolkit will provide program compliance information, tools, and case study examples to help communities integrate renewable energy components such as solar photovoltaic, solar hot water, and cogeneration into the program in an efficient, cost-effective, and impactful way by using CPD funds. This action builds on an announcement last year during which, HUD’s CPD office affirmed that under current guidelines, Section 108 Community Development Block Grant funding can be used for clean energy and energy efficiency projects.
-
Enhancing the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)’s PowerSaver Policy to Make It Easier to Borrow Up To $25,000 For Solar and Energy-Efficient Improvements: FHA is planning updates to its second-mortgage program that will make it easier for homeowners to borrow up to $25,000 for solar and energy-efficient improvements by cutting red tape and making improvements more affordable. Key features of the second mortgage program will include: 1) providing flexible underwriting to recognize the reduced cost of utilities for energy efficient homes; 2) allowing homeowners to control the disbursement of loan funds to the contractor; and 3) permitting contributions to lower out-of-pocket expenses and/or reduce borrower interest rates.
-
Clarifying Policy to Pave the Way for Increased FHA Solar and Energy Efficient Financing on Federally Assisted and Insured Housing. FHA recently clarified its policy on first mortgages to allow flexible financing options and the ability to obtain larger loan amounts for solar systems. FHA is conducting forums on the updated Single Family Handbook to help increase lender awareness of these financing options, which will be effective September 14, 2015.
-
Launching a National Community Solar Partnership: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in collaboration with HUD, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), representatives from solar companies, NGOs, and state and community leaders are launching a National Community Solar Partnership to unlock access to solar for the nearly 50 percent of households and business that are renters or do not have adequate roof space to install solar systems. The partnership will leverage the interest in the public and private sector to expand access to community solar, in particular, for low- and moderate- income communities, while utilizing the technical expertise of DOE and the National Laboratories.
-
Issuing A Guide To Support States In Developing Community Solar Programs: The DOE SunShot Initiative and the National Renewable Energy Lab are releasing a new guide, which answers key program design questions collected from states that have implemented shared solar policies and programs around the country. The guide will also explain how shared solar polices work in conjunction with other polices and provides links to relevant shared solar publications.
-
Launching a Solar Working Group To Save Households on Their Energy Bills: The DOE SunShot Initiative, with assistance from Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is forming a new working group to disseminate information to new homebuilders that want to offer customer-owned solar PV.
- In 2014, we were energizing more solar every three weeks than we did in the entire year in 2008.
- There’s also this:
Approximately 72 MWs of solar energy producing infrastructure has been installed on over 60,000 Department of Defense (DOD) privatized housing units to date. To amplify this progress, earlier this summer, DOD and the White House Council on Environmental Quality convened the companies that own the privatized housing units to share best practices and encourage them to set goals for increasing the amount of solar energy generated on privatized military housing through the end of 2016.
Today, four companies are committing to provide solar power to housing on over 40 military bases across the United States, while saving military families money on energy bills and making military communities more energy secure. These commitments total over 233 MWs, reducing annual carbon emissions by approximately 324 metric tons.
- Assuming a 1% increase in renewables per year was based on what happened since last year, and doesn't take into account the programs that President Obama has already launched since then. That should easily propel us to 33% without further action.
While affirmations of a commitment to moving our energy portfolio to clean energy is amazingly welcome, I’m not sure Clinton’s announcement yesterday has really told us anything beyond that we will stay the course we are on and we’ll get to 33% in 10 years. In other words, it’s already in motion. Anyone who steps into the WH and maintains that trajectory will likely stay on track to meet the 33% goal.
But that goal is not enough. People are already suffering. Lives are being lost. Species are dying out. It’s not coming in 2030. It’s already here.
www.theguardian.com/…
www.wunderground.com/…
[This is as of Friday]
The 400-ppm news comes just as Earth is experiencing a heat wave fueled by the long-term rise in greenhouse gases and goosed by El Niño. NOAA announced on Wednesday that global temperatures in October 2015 showed the largest departure from the long-term average for any month going back to 1880. The UK Met Office now predicts that global temperature in 2015 will likely end up at least 1°C warmer than the preindustrial average. This would put our planet halfway to the 2°C warming that’s long been viewed by many scientists and policy experts as a level that significantly raises the odds of major climate disruption (although there is nothing magic about 2°C; a smaller rise could still have serious consequences). A brief video from the journal Nature, released on Thursday, serves as a quick guide to the origin and significance of the 2°C goal.
You’ll have to excuse the size of the video — I don’t know how to adjust it in DK5.
This is about what will happen if we meet the 2 degree limit we’re trying to meet NOW. This is what will happen if we move at the pace we’re actually aiming for, but we’re already on track for 3 degrees.
Note that the mideast will be basically unlivable, which can only lead to more turmoil and mayhem.
This isn’t about one candidate v. the other, or even one vision v. the other. This is about what needs to happen in order for us to survive. Unfortunately, 33% renewables by 2030 is woefully insufficient, and it’s hardly a stretch. We’re already well along the way to achieving that, which is great. But it’s not enough, and not fast enough. (And I would like to know if the use of the word “clean” energy rather than “renewable” means fracking is still part of Clinton’s plan, which is truly unfortunate, since CNG is carbon-based and the extraction process is highly polluting.)
New York and California have already committed to about twice that number by 2030. Two Professors at Stanford will unveil a complex plan by which 139 nations could be powered 100% by renewables by 2050.
We have an ongoing argument here at Dkos between Sanders’ bold visionary statements (which many like to call “pie in the sky” or “magical”) and Clinton’s more measured policy proposals (which many here decry as “incrementalism” — and not in a good way).
But in this subject, it’s not a matter of opinion or which candidate we like more. It’s about the survival of the planet. We don’t have time for incrementalism. What sounds like a bold policy proposal from Clinton is simply a relatively modest incremental goal, the strategy for which is already in motion.
Whoever the nominee is, that person must understand the dire nature of this threat, and must put us on the right path and the right timeline for bold, immediate action. That person must lead us by putting our lives and health before the health of the fossil fuel industry.
Whatever happens in the primaries, we can’t end up with someone who won’t.
We can do better. We must do better. We must push our nominee to do better — whoever it is — no excuses. Perhaps “To hell with the fossil fuel industry” is brash, but it’s the right mindset to start the monumental change that needs to happen. That industry needs to die, before we do. We need to leave it in the ground. It’s time we saved our own lives.
We don’t have 10 years to do it.