A New Energy Strategy for the Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere has a unique advantage in global energy markets. It is rich in natural resources, from conventional fuels such as oil and natural gas, to critical minerals such as lithium for batteries. The region is also poised to become a leader in newer and emerging energy resources. It has, for example, abundant potential for solar and wind energy and other advanced energy technologies, such as nuclear energy. It enjoys high and rapidly growing levels of renewable energy, especially in power generation, largely based on significant levels of legacy, utility-scale hydropower. Many of the Americas’ subregions share cross-border electric …

Renewables, Power & Energy Use Forecast to 2050

Three global themes emerging over our model’s forecasting period are most relevant for this report on its implications for renewables, power, and energy use:

Final energy demand plateaus around 2030 at 430 exajoules (EJ), 7% higher than in 2015, due mainly to greater efficiency of end-users, less use of fossil fuels at relatively low thermal efficiency, and slower population and productivity growth. Electricity consumption increases by 140% and it becomes the largest energy carrier1 , followed by gas. Other energy carriers, such as coal and oil, experience significant reductions or only slight increases in consumption. Electricity production becomes dominated by

Renewable Electricity Generation and Storage Technologies

The United States has diverse and abundant renewable resources, including biomass, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar, and wind resources. These renewable resources are geographically constrained but widespread—most are distributed across all or most of the contiguous states. Within these broad resource types, a variety of commercially-available renewable electricity generation technologies have been deployed in the United States and other countries, including stand-alone biopower, co-fired biopower (in coal plants), hydrothermal geothermal, hydropower, distributed PV, utility-scale PV, CSP, onshore wind, and fixed-bottom offshore wind. Today, these resources contribute about 10% of total U.S. electricity supply. Renewable generation sources have varying degrees of variability …