Everyone knows fossil fuels are bad. They cause dangerous carbon pollution, adding to climate change, and poison our air and water making us sick. But there’s good news: The Great Transition is happening. The new book by Lester Brown makes it clear that clean energy is on its way in and dirty coal and gas are on the way out.The United States (and the world!) is switching to renewable energy faster than ever. Check out these great examples to see how we are well on our way to a cleaner, greener, safer future.
- We’re moving beyond coal. The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign has worked to retire 188 coal plants. And we’re not stopping there. By 2030, we’re hoping to transition half of the coal-fired fleet to clean energy.
- Beyond our borders the coal boom is going bust -- for every one new coal plant built world wide, two have been shelved or canceled since 2010.
- We’ve even moved entire cities and states beyond coal to clean energy. Los Angeles will be completely coal free by 2025 and the entire state of Oregon will be coal free by 2020.
- College campuses and universities are joining the fight. The Sierra Student Coalition is working to both retire on campus coal plants and divest entire campuses from fossil fuels. Even campuses in the heart of coal country are moving beyond coal, the University of Louisville in Kentucky, the University of Tennessee and Western Kentucky University have all pledged to end coal use on campus.
But we’re going farther than shutting down coal plants. We’re replacing dirty energy with clean renewable energy. In early 2014, global wind generating capacity totalled 318,000 megawatts, enough to power more than 80 million U.S. homes. That’s wind generation stat: by early 2014, global wind generating capacity totalled 318,000 megawatts, enough to power more than 80 million U.S. homes. To put that in perspective, the United States has just under 120 million households.
Texas, a state that used to lead the U.S in oil production now leads the nation in wind development, with 12,400 megawatts of capacity at the start of 2014.
- Wind isn’t the only renewable energy source that’s soaring. Between 2008 and 2013, solar panel installation worldwide skyrocketed from 16,000 to 139,000 megawatts -- enough to power every home in Germany, a country with 83 million people.
Stateside, solar use is growing too. By late 2014 there were nearly 600,000 individual solar photovoltaic systems in the United States, almost twice as many as in 2012. And this number is expected to grow, by 2016 we may see the number of individual solar systems pass 1 million.
- Corporations and billionaires are even switching to renewables. Even Google, a search engine so powerful it’s now a verb is going renewable. Recently they built an 82-megawatt solar PV array in southern California. But what’s even better than the sheer size of it, is that it’s being built on an abandoned oil and gas field. The old fossil fuel haven has transitioned to a beacon of clean energy.
There’s good reason were transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy, it’s what the public wants to do. A 2013 gallup poll shows that coal is America's least favored energy source. And a 2015 Navigant Research national poll showed that 79% of Americans want more emphasis on producing solar energy and 70% want more emphasis on producing wind energy.
Not too long from now coal plant smokestacks that dirty the air and harm our climate will be replaced buy solar panels on our rooftops and wind turbines on our hillsides. This transition is well underway but we still need your help. Visit addup.org to join the fight. Sign petitions and get involved with campaigns to move the United States to a clean energy future.
