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Joe Biden aims to make the US power sector carbon free by 2035 the latest. This is a huge challenge. To understand a little better where US stands at the moment, I did a quick comparison between US and EU power sector developments (2000 - 2019). THREAD https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling-the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/
Where were we in 2019? In the US, fossil fuels still provided two thirds of the electricity produced. Nuclear accounted for 20%, and renewables for 18%.
In the EU, fossils provided only 39% of total power generation in 2019, followed by renewables with 35% and nuclear with 26%.
In both power sectors, renewables increased substantially since 2000: The US increased RES generation roughly by factor 2.1, the EU roughly by factor 2.5.
In the US, this RES increase was dominantly driven by wind and solar, with hydro and biomass being more or less stable since 2000.
The domination by wind and solar is also true for the EU, however, there is to be seen a substantial increase in biomass as well.
Nuclear: While the US slightly increased by 7%, the EU decreased by 13%. By chance, total TWh in 2019 are almost identical.
Fossils: Biggest differences both in size and development. While the US reduced their generation by only 4%, the EU reduced by 22%. Also, the fossil generation in the US is roughly twice as high as in the EU.
When taking a closer look at the fossil generation, we see that in the US there has been a clear tendency to switch from coal to gas for a decade now, which especially is triggered by inexpensive local shale gas.
This trend, however, also spilled over to the EU and is additionally reinforced by the EU’s emission trading scheme. In both the US and the EU, natural gas accounted for roughly two thirds of fossil power generation in 2019.
Power Sector CO2-emissions: US declined by 30%, EU emissions by 39%. In both cases, the majortiy of the decrease happend in the last decade.
However, the US recent decarbonisation speed is nowhere near meeting the decarbonization goal in 2035. If speed of the last two decades is projected into the future, the US would be carbon neutral no earlier than 2064.
In summary, the US was able to reduce its emissions mainly through coal/gas-switching, as RES increase was mainly eaten up by higher demand.
In the EU, emissions decreased even more as the coal/gas-switching was supported by higher RES increase and less raise in demand.
All data is taken from the anual power sector report by @EmberClimate: https://ember-climate.org/data/global-electricity/#
In case you want to read more about recent developments in the EU (including also 2020 numbers), check out this report by @EmberClimate and @AgoraEW:
https://static.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin2/Projekte/2021/2020_01_EU-Annual-Review_2020/A-EW_202_Report_European-Power-Sector-2020.pdf
https://static.agora-energiewende.de/fileadmin2/Projekte/2021/2020_01_EU-Annual-Review_2020/A-EW_202_Report_European-Power-Sector-2020.pdf
