Prices Fall, Deployment and Investment Rise
The United States saw continued growth in
renewable energy, natural gas and energy efficiency in 2014, according
to the third annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. The Factbook
shows that U.S. deployment of sustainable energy increased as prices
continued to fall and that investment in U.S. clean energy grew at a
higher rate.
Analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance who prepared the Factbook
for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy found that “over the
2007–2014 period, U.S. carbon emissions from the energy sector dropped
9%, U.S. natural gas production rose 25% and total U.S. investment in
clean energy (renewables and advanced grid, storage and electrified
transport technologies) reached $386 billion.”
“The 2015 Factbook clearly shows that America is on the path
to a more sustainable energy sector,” said Lisa Jacobson, President of
the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. “Our energy productivity is
rising along with economic growth, while energy-intensive industries
are onshoring production to the United States to take advantage of low
energy costs. All of this is happening as investment in clean energy
continues to grow and as new natural gas infrastructure continues to
come online. These are strong positive signs for America’s economy and
environment.”
The full 2015 edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook is available at http://www.bcse.org/sustainableenergyfactbook.html. Key trends in sustainable energy growth noted in the 2015 Factbook include:
- The U.S. economy is becoming more energy productive, with “an outright decoupling between electricity growth and economic growth.” Between 1990 and 2007, electricity demand grew at an annual rate of 1.9% while, between 2007 and 2014, annualized electricity demand growth has been zero. Meanwhile, over those past seven years, the U.S. economy has grown by 8%.
- The U.S. power sector is decarbonizing, with the contribution of renewable energy (including large hydropower projects) to U.S. electricity rising from 8.3% in 2007 to an estimated 12.9% in 2014, and production and consumption of natural gas hitting record highs in 2014. Since 2000, the Factbook shows, 93% of new power capacity built in the United States has come from natural gas and renewable energy.
- Investment in U.S. clean energy is up again. The U.S. clean energy sector has seen $35–65 billion of investment each year since 2007, a significant increase over the annual investment of $10.3 billion in 2004. Overall U.S. investment in clean energy totaled $51.8 billion in 2014, a 7% increase from 2013 levels. The United States finished the year ranked second globally for new dollars invested in clean energy, behind China.
The Factbook also discusses the collapse of oil prices in
2014. While there is no explicit link between oil (which in the United
States is used mostly for transport) and most sustainable energy
technologies (which are used mostly in the power sector), the oil price
shock has a profound global impact and may result in “second-order”
effects that could impact U.S. sustainable energy, the Factbook noted.
http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__pr/TCB/2012/11/02CleanEnergy.html?archive=2098216 |
“Against the backdrop of a surging economy and crumbling oil prices,
major trends around decarbonization and improving energy productivity
continued in the United States,” said Michel Di Capua, head of Americas
research for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “Low-carbon energy
technologies stand to benefit from key policies proposed in 2014,
including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed
regulation for the power sector and an innovative new vision for the
electricity market in New York State.”
The Factbook also shows renewable energy and energy efficiency making significant strides across several metrics in 2014, including:
- Renewables represent 205 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity across the country. Wind and solar are the fastest-growing technologies, having more than tripled since 2008. Hydropower remains the largest renewable energy source at 79 GW, with biomass, geothermal and waste-to-energy representing another 17 GW but limited in new build by a lack of long-term policy certainty.
- Wind and solar reaching grid parity in multiple regions. In 2014, wind developers secured power purchase agreements (PPAs) with utilities below the levelized cost of electricity for fossil-fired power and below the price of wholesale power in the Midwest, Southwest and Texas. Solar providers were also able to offer PPAs or leases to homeowners below the residential retail electricity price, reaching “socket parity,” while utility-scale solar plants in Texas and Utah secured PPAs at some of the lowest prices ever recorded globally ($50–55 per megawatt-hour).
- The Pacific and New England regions made the greatest strides in energy efficiency. The Southeast and Southwest regions, meanwhile, have the greatest opportunities to increase efficiency. Across the United States, commercial buildings have showed the greatest progress on energy efficiency over the last several years.
While the United States is clearly heading toward more use of sustainable energy, the Factbook
did show deviations from the larger trend. These include an increase of
coal’s share in U.S. electricity generation from 37% in 2012 to an
estimated 39% in 2013 and 2014; an increase in carbon emissions from the
U.S. energy sector of around 3% since 2012; and a slowdown in
utilities’ and states’ adoption of energy efficiency.
The Factbook notes that policy will play a central role in
determining where the U.S. energy mix heads in 2015 and beyond. State,
federal and international policies – including the EPA’s Clean Power
Plan regulation on existing power plants; the global climate
negotiations scheduled in Paris this fall; and federal and state-level
support for renewables, efficiency and natural gas development – will
all help determine the speed with which the trend toward sustainable
energy develops in 2015.
The Factbook also contains extensive analysis, charts and data
on a wide range of sustainable energy trends in 2014, including energy
storage, oil and transportation, distributed energy, combined heat and
power (CHP), carbon capture and storage (CCS), and natural gas
infrastructure investment.
For more on the 2015 edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook, get the facts at: http://www.bcse.org/sustainableenergyfactbook.html.
...Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) www.BNEF.com
Press Release dated February 4, 2015
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