To Green: From Fossils and the USA-the Course of Change Towards a Renewables-based Energy Economy
Reductions of greenhouse gas and the global battle against the requirements of climatic change have been becoming a reality for the United States and takes its process as that of a transformation from using fossil resources towards the use of renewable sources of energy. A new dimension of green development – the path to an appropriate end. This paper points out the challenges and progress along the U.S. path to a green economy, the role of renewable energy in achieving that goal, and the policies and technology innovations that influence the formation of this change.
The Path to Renewable Energy
The U.S. has been the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world; oil, coal, and natural gas comprised a very high percentage of the sources of energy for the country. However, the use of fossil fuels has many negative impacts on the environment; the most significant of these environmental concerns are air and water pollution along with increased levels of CO2 emissions. Hence, today, the voices of clean, green, and sustainable energy have reached a zenith and asked the people to shift towards renewable sources of energy, which include wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal energies.
Some of the advantages of renewable energy over fossil fuel are that it has a negligible or no contribution to the greenhouse effect, with all the resources which can be tapped into replenish it; it could lead to the decrease of reliance on imported fuels. In investing in the renewables, employment, higher economic activity, and energy security is at stake. Being abundant within the U.S. territory, with natural resources of sun, wind, and water, renewable energy could be harnessed in a huge volume.
Government Policies and Incentives
The government policies have precipitated the changes within the US toward renewable energy. During the last ten years, there has been an inter-linked chain of both federal and state-level policies that aim at promoting the development and subsequent deployment of clean energy technologies.
The Biden administration, which took office in January 2021, has been fairly transparent in the approach they would use to tackle climate change and the transition into a low-carbon economy. One of the president’s targets is that the country shall reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but in the meanwhile, it is supposed to reduce the emission by 50% to 52% below the 2005 level by 2030. For all this to be achieved, the administration has placed proposals for huge investment in renewable energy infrastructure, energy efficiency, and clean technologies.
The most crucial legislative success in this regard is the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes provision for increasing clean energy production and reduction of carbon emissions. It offers tax credits to wind, solar, and other types of renewable energy projects by promoting electric vehicles, clean manufacturing, and the enhancement of energy efficiency. It is the landmark piece of legislation most boistered to expedite a switch to renewable energy and help the United States meet its climate-related targets.
Many US states have now developed their renewable energy targets as well as the clean energy act. For example, California voted to achieve clean energy of 100% in 2045. Moreover, others like New York, Washington, Oregon among other states set standards on renewable energies, policies relating to energy storage as well as rewarding green technologies.
Emerging technologies for the green economy
Technological advancement has been the major driver associated with cheap-priced renewable energy. The price of renewable energy technologies has sharply declined over the past ten years and has significantly moved closer to fossil fuel.
Perhaps the most significant cost reductions are to be seen in the solar energy domain. In that area, improvement in photovoltaic technology played a very key role in that reduction and also in economies of scale. All residential has really come down so much that solar farms, so to say huge ones, are being built on the whole territory of the United States. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on these developments, solar will be the new source of capacity for electricity by 2030.
While costs for winds have followed a similar trajectory over the past two decades, cost competition has become increasingly possible-especially for areas as blessed as the Midwest or offshore-with such superior wind resources. Technological advances and other efficiencies in generating wind power have made this energy the fastest-growing source of renewables in the United States.
The advancement in technology in energy storage has been key for the shift to renewable sources of energy. For instance, such sources of renewable energies are wind and solar sources which are not supplied over a constant period of time. This therefore means that there will always be a time at which one requires the supply and thus necessitates the presence of a system for storing energy like low cost battery storages that have been made possible through the advancement of technologies in storing batteries.
Electrification is also being positioned as one of the main mechanisms by which to decarbonize sectors like transport, heat, and industry. The rise in electric vehicle stock has picked up pace as much as investment in charging infrastructure has itself helped speed up the transition of the rest of the slow-moving, mostly remaining gasoline and diesel-fueled vehicles on the road. Building and industrial electrification supports such decreases even as renewable electricity is used at much greater intensities.
End
A lot of things have to fall into place for society to get towards a more conscious economy. Probably one of the most complex tasks is modernizing the U.S. energy grid. As it is, the energy grid infrastructure was constructed based on the idea of baseload energy generation. Renewable power sources tend to be intermittent: think wind and solar. The energization of new renewable energy generation, energy storage, and decentralized energy production demands an extension and modernization of the grid for reliable power supply.
Next, large-scale renewables financing comes in. Although the cost of renewable technology has declined, much greater capacity investment in infrastructure and diversification out of fossil fuel dependence are needed, and the Inflation Reduction Act can facilitate these changes, but it will instead force additional private sector investment toward accomplishing long-run energy goals.
Apart from this, the US has a factor of how to handle this social-economic transition to renewables by dealing with affected communities and fossil fuel industry-dependent workers. Re-skilling, economic opportunities for renewable energy, and support to communities affected are also important in order to make a transition fair.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, the United States is indeed well over being meaningfully poised towards a Green economy. Renwable sources of energy led America’s attack to reduce those notorious greenhouse gaseous emission as well to tackle climate changes. The above changes are highly due to high technological innovation a facilitating government and lucrative private investments, which arise from numerous recently opening up, as well filled with jobs prospects, in new Green economies.
There are challenges in front of this but an investment in new technologies and continuous modernization of energy grids and good social adaptation will make a country like the U.S. stand tall to be the cleaner energy developers, and that shall only happen once commitment to the creation of a sustainable future is upheld in the fact that the pathway from fossil-based to a renewed one brings change to reduce and create resilience coupled with economic success for the economy in generations moving forward.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Renewable Energy Industry Reports.