San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization

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Technology Tuesdays: The Future of Energy is in the Wind, and Solar

Hello Partners!

Let’s talk about renewable energy! It seems as though everywhere we look there are solar arrays popping up. While that is encouraging. One thing that is more encouraging than this is the price for renewable energy.

As renewable energy becomes more and more ubiquitous, the market responds by decreasing prices. This dictates which technology will become widely accepted. While solar energy is quickly becoming the widely accepted technology, there is another kind of renewable energy technology that is gaining a lot of traction: wind.

Just as I mentioned, pricing has a lot to do with which technology becomes widely adopted. Nonrenewable energy technology pricing is expected to peak sometime in the next decade. Pricing for solar and wind have already fallen drastically in recent years and are expected to continue to fall. In fact, solar and onshore wind is expected to fall 30% and offshore wind an additional 50% by 2030.

You may be reading this and asking yourself, how can wind become a viable renewable energy source if it is only currently meeting 6% of the U.S. electricity demand? Wind is one of the fastest growing sources of electricity supply and is projected to be 20% of the overall energy portfolio by 2030. Although, it doesn’t make practical sense to install wind turbines everywhere, by 2050, it is projected to be a viable source of renewable energy for all 50 states. In fact, it is anticipated to have less market volatility than natural gas and coal which means potentially significant savings for customers.

So, why are we so excited about wind? According to the Wind Vision Report published by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Wind Energy Technologies Office, there are a number of benefits to increasing the amount of wind energy to our energy portfolio. Some examples given in the report are that wind energy reduces air pollution. Given the amount of wind energy that is projected to be on the market by 2050, the avoided emissions exceed 250,000 metric tons of air pollutants. Additionally, wind energy preserves our water resources. The use of wind energy will save more than 260 billion gallons of water that would otherwise have been used by the electricity sector in power generation. It is also anticipated that communities will be able to collect tax revenue through land use agreements of nearly $3.2 billion annually by 2050.

I believe the verdict is in! While we thought solar was the way to go, we can look forward to seeing more wind-generated energy in the coming years.

The savings never stop!

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Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/feliciajackson/2021/01/27/top-technologies-transforming-energy-in-2021/?sh=16f850143775
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/wind-vision#:~:text=The%20Wind%20Vision%20Report%20shows,and%20supporting%20services%20by%202050.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/wind-vision-1