Got Science? The Best Way to Boost US Clean Energy (That You've Never Heard of)

Photo: Lance Cheung For four days this May, Portugal's 10.5 million residents relied entirely on clean energy to power their homes and businesses; Portuguese wind, solar, and hydropower facilities supplied enough juice to power the nation for a record 107 hours straight. On an unusually blustery day last year, Denmark's wind farms supplied 140 percent of that nation's electricity demand. And tiny Costa Rica derived 99 percent of its energy from renewables in 2015. Stories like these make many clean energy-minded Americans jealous. Federal action on wind and solar in the United States has been historically slow and inadequate. A disheartening number of U.S. lawmakers still won't even accept the urgent need to lower carbon emissions by accelerating our transition away from burning fossil fuels. Across the U.S., however, a little-known policy has played an outsized role for decades in helping states to ramp up renewable energy. So-called "Renewable Energy Standards" (sometimes also known as Renewable Portfolio Standards) are market-based policies that require electricity providers to gradually increase the amount of wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources in their power supplies. More than half of all U.S. states already have them. And, according to a study released earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Energy, these policies have led to enormous benefits. States' adoption of renewable energy standards have led to reductions in air pollution and carbon emissio...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news