Numbers Don’t Lie

In large, populous nations, the complete reliance on these renewables would require what we are still missing: either mass-scale, long-term (days to weeks) electricity storage that would back up intermittent electricity generation, or extensive grids of high-voltage lines to transmit electricity across time zones and from sunny and windy regions to

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Wind power in the Lower 48 states produced about 335,753 megawatt hours (MWh) on July 22, the lowest since Oct. 4, 2021, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). When the wind did not blow, power companies usually burn more gas because it is the only big source of power they can turn to quickly to provide

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As challenging as such arrangements are, they rely on technically mature (and still improving) solutions—that is, on more efficient PV cells, large onshore and offshore wind turbines, and high-voltage (including long-distance direct current) transmission. If costs, permitting processes, and not-in-my-backyard sentiments were no obstacles, these tec

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After all, in gloomy Germany, photovoltaic generation works on average only 11–12 percent of time, and the combustion of fossil fuels still produced nearly half (48 percent) of all electricity in 2020. Moreover, as its share of wind generation has increased, its construction of new high-voltage lines to transmit this electricity from the windy nort

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