The Power of Renewable Energy Remains Strong

(LUTHERVILLE, MD) After years of debate over its validity, much less its viability, renewable energy has grown. While renewable energy has been the fastest growing domestic energy sector over the past decade, in recent years the expansion of sources such as wind, solar and biopower has boomed, adding on to the impressive growth of a sector that also includes hydropower, geothermal power, and biofuels. The DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) says it expects that non-hydroelectric renewable energy resources such as solar and wind will be the fastest-growing source of U.S. electricity generation for at least the next two years. EIA’s January 2019 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) forecasts that electricity generation from utility-scale solar generating units will grow by 10 percent in 2019 and by 17 percent in 2020. The January STEO also shows that wind generation will grow by 12 percent this year and 14 percent next year. Those increases will raise the share held by solar and wind energy in total U.S. electricity generation. The projected increase in renewable energy resources is a result of the new generating capacity the industry expects to bring online. About 11 gigawatts (GW) of wind capacity – the largest amount of new wind capacity installed in the United States since 2012 – and solar, now the third-largest renewable energy source in the United States power sector. Solar capacity will increase by some 32 percent over the two-year span, the EIA projects.