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US: In the North Sea, 75 miles off the Yorkshire coast of England, the world’s largest offshore wind farm began generating electricity in 2019. Powering more than one million homes, Hornes is the initial segment of a multi-layered project to supply more than 1 million of energy. It does not hold that distinction for long, however, with construction under construction on Dogger Bank, also in the waters of the United Kingdom, which would be the world’s largest offshore site, which when fully powered will power up to six million homes Provides.
With a fraction of the United States‘ coastline, the U.K is the world’s sixth-largest wind producer and, along with Germany, has transformed Europe into the immense offshore wind power producing region on the planet. Today, UK Has some 40 offshore wind farms producing 40 GW of electricity. (One gigawatt is equivalent to the production of a nuclear power plant.)
The US has an offshore wind farm.
After decades of fit and start, despite the nation’s nearly 100,000 miles of coastline and shallow water, suitable for farm construction and wind resources, twice the amount of electricity currently used by the US Can produce Block Island Wind Farm, a small 30 MW megawatt facility on the Rhode Island coast that delivers up to 17,000 homes, is to be shown to all US for offshore wind power.
The apathy of a strong offshore wind industry is a clear example of the lack of climate urgency in the US when compared to countries like the UK. A four-year US absence from the Paris Agreement underscores how far the nation has slipped from Europe in a region where it wants excellence.
Not surprisingly, the Trump administration‘s four-year defection from the battle to save the planet has barely drawn international consensus on the climate crisis. The question that the US should face in the next four years is not so much as to hold offshore wind with its European allies, but whether the US can meet the climate goals of its own Paris accord and zero Fast forwarding can achieve a redesign of international credibility. Carbon emission.
The bright spot, if it can be called that, is that the United States was able to spill water on the transition to renewable goods such as wind and solar because President Donald Trump’s quest to boost the coal industry ignored the fact Given that climatology was dominant for supply. And demand in the US energy markets.
But for the first time in modern history, America was isolated and insulted on the international stage. Most countries have destroyed cancer and belted exhaust smoke due to an American presidential spectacle disregarding scientific evidence and referring to “big, beautiful coal” or the noise of wind turbines. Trump replaced the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era regime that served as the foundation for US climate targets but did not manage to revive the fall’s fossil fuel industry.
In contrast, over the past decade, American consumers, utility companies, and state policymakers decided to begin the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, although their efforts kept pace with Europe. This created a rift among consumers. In the early 2000s, Americans rewarded high energy prices, which then came with wind and solar, hindering the rise of these alternative energy sources. In one example, this controversial Massachusetts offshore proposal came to an end in 2017 after nearly two decades of flourishing, with efforts by affluent NIMBYs to crush Cape Wind.
In Europe in the 1990s, by contrast, widespread support for clean energy and a willingness to support investment in the region drove prices down over time. “Danish and German and British ratepayers paid more for electricity,” says Willett Campton, associate director and founder of the University of Delaware Center for Research in Wind. “They now have the power of cost parity from offshore winds, heaps of jobs, and industries that are exporting valuable project products that are not made anywhere else – and they were right.”
In the US, the rate-of-progress gradually became more sensible about the consequences of continued dependence on fossil fuels. Over time, he actively sought out companies that renewed wind and solar in the energy mix. Residential homeowners of paid means for solar panel installations. Small onshore wind facilities allowed municipalities to diversify their energy sources. And as awareness of the climate threat increased and interest in renewable energy grew, energy markets gained momentum.
As more onshore wind farms and solar plants came online, prices fell to the extent that they were equal to or less than the cost of coal and natural gas, making them more attractive to consumers and utility companies. Have become. Those price signals accelerated new offshore projects in New England and Mid-Atlantic waters. Some 20 projects are currently in various construction and development stages, and states are moving forward to plant thousands of megawatts of offshore wind sites in water by 2035. The coastal wind sector continues to move forward with ten new sites. According to the American Wind Energy Association, more than 600,000 homes in nine states have electricity.
The past four years’ story is mixed, with markets and state and local governments advancing clean energy and the Trump administration the other way. According to data compiled by the Institute for Policy Policy, the administration largely failed in most of its environmental, energy, and natural-resources litigation pending in federal courts, a potential lawsuit. Was facing The solar industry was also tied into knots, however, due to Trump’s obsession with punishing China, which produces most of the world’s solar panels. By slapping a 25 percent tariff on those panels, Trump wreaked havoc on solar installations.
Some highly evasive wind projects also fell into the knot. Trump’s first Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, was a prominent supporter of offshore wind and was familiar with wind leases off the coasts of Massachusetts and New York. His successor, David Barnhart, behaved the opposite. The interests of fish, skepticism about wind sites and their impact on fish stocks became involved in sowing. Increasing uncertainty about the federal goal contributes to a halt to another Massachusetts wind project, the long-delayed Vineyard Wind on the southeast Massachusetts coast. Vineyard Wind abruptly withdrew from the federal permitting process a month before an expected environmental-review decision in January of this year and may wait for favorable input from Biden administration officials to proceed.
But the growing appeal of clean energy did not diminish; In particular, the employment generation potential of wind and solar projects lured Bipartisan support. The Obama-era wind and solar tax credits were particularly incentives that no job-seeking Republican governor could ignore. Texas is the largest producer of onshore wind power in the US (if it were a nation, it would be the fifth-largest producer globally) and is the most suitable area for offshore wind along the Gulf Coast. Deep-red states have embraced solar, among them South Carolina, whose Republican governor, Henry McMaster, lowered Trump’s tariffs on Chinese solar panels in testimony before the International Trade Commission two years ago.
Solar and wind tax credits were also included in the December epidemic stimulus package, along with credits for offshore wind projects added to the tax code for the first time. The law also added funds for clean-energy research and development.
The epidemic has had a negligible impact on existing wind and solar projects. After implementing epidemic safety measures in the early months of COVID-19 and battling with workers’ health issues, work on various wind and solar projects continued. Globally, investment in renewables increased 5 percent in the first half of 2020 due to offshore wind projects.
In his first year as president, Joe Biden’s easiest move is to make his initial decision on climate, a cleverly calibrated team of climate veterans led by former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry and EPA Director Gina McCarthy. Bringing together, he impressed domestic audiences and international collaborators alike. Trump’s flaw in a clean power plan was a setback that Biden might undo to pursue a more ambitious emissions target.
However, Biden aims to move forward on achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and tightening Trump emission standards, which Trump can run into significant challenges with conservative Republican appointees with a federal judiciary and the Supreme Court below.
As it is not known, it seems as if there is no time to waste. The epidemic caused the steepest decline in global emissions since World War II. Still, that development was acknowledged by the caveat that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere continue to increase despite human activity decreasing over the course of a year.
The 2021 Climate Change Performance Index found that none of the 57 countries and the European Union, which produce 90 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, meet the Paris targets to curb the global average temperature rise this century Are on a path. Being well confined does not increase more than 1.5 ° below 2 ° C. In the race to eliminate fossil fuels, the UK comes in fifth place, while the U. S. is dead last.
A recent report by the American Environment Program (UNEP), the Frankfurt School-UNEP Cooperation Center, and BloombergNEF found that to improve this, countries would have to install 3,000-gigawatt renewables to meet the Paris targets. Countries and companies have committed to adding just 826 GW of renewable energy (excluding large hydro plants) by 2030.
Trump’s original proposals for the Paris Agreement had little effect on European and Chinese commitments. Under Obama, as the number one and two contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, China and the US teamed together to get the rest of the world to the Paris negotiating table. Trump had no broad, comprehensive rollback of environmental policies to match what happened in the US, with the exception of Brazil and its anti-climate president, Jair Bolsonaro, to the contrary, “Europe probably resulted in Trump more Was aggressive. , John F. of Harvard. Says Robert Stavins, professor of energy and economic development at the Kennedy School of Government. “China had the pleasure of moving from co-leadership to sole leadership.”
With Trump withdrawing from Paris, and the European Union, and the UK. With Brexit in favor, China skated smoothly in a leadership vacuum, creating an aggressive momentum to build solar and onshore wind facilities. China has announced a new climate target of net-zero carbon emissions before 2060 to strengthen its requirements to reduce greenhouse gas production before 2060. How China plans to achieve those goals will continue to rely heavily on coal.
For his part, Biden will try to convince the US’s European allies that the country is serious about improving its nationally determined contribution (each country’s climate goals in the United Nations Parliament). Under Obama, the target was 2 percent below the 2005 level by 2050, 2 percent less than by 2005, and 32 percent by 2030.
In the next round of climate talks to be held in Glasgow in November, the European Union and the UK Would be interested to see severe and detailed long term commitments. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that the U. K. It will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions at a faster pace by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
Domestically, Biden’s climate team may find more favorable political tailwinds. A Democratic majority in the Senate means the party has a chance to bring Republicans along on issues such as tax credits. But progress on more severe climate legislation, such as ensuring more decisive climate action in legislation, could run into the Senate’s 60-vote barrier, not to mention the conservative Supreme Court’s hostility to stronger federal environmental regulation.
With the COVID-19 showing some signs of an early end to the recession, a Biden stimulus plan and infrastructure proposal could allow renewable components to legislate – as they did in the December emergency bill. “There will be bipartisan support for a small green, if not a recovery package for a dark green in spring,” Stavins says. “Another opportunity for greening lies within infrastructure legislation, specifically for the power grid, as the power grid has to be upgraded for greater reliance on renewables.”
Johnson raised the climate crisis in his first phone call with Biden, and the world would likewise be watching America’s response to the situation. In Glasgow, U.S. Has to demonstrate that it can keep pace as the developed world comes forward with even more ambitious plans. But after four years of Trump and his own anarchy, the UK And Europe can be fantastic in the short term. Stavins says European democrats are “thrilled” with the victory. In fact, he says, “Biden may have a longer honeymoon in Europe than in the United States.”