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Today, renewable energy sources generate 12 percent of electricity in the U.S. But wind, wave, sunshine and others represent more than 93 percent of the energy the country could be producing, according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy.
If renewable energy is going to be a bigger player and have a significant impact in cutting the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that are driving climate change, it's going to have to grow quickly. According to Princeton University scientists Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow's "wedge" strategy of climate change mitigation—which quantifies as a wedge on a time series graph various sets of efforts to maintain flat global carbon emissions between now and 2055—at least two million megawatts of new renewable energy will have to be built in the next 40 years, effectively replacing completely all existing coal-fired power plants as well as accounting for increases in energy use between now and mid-century.
"It's a goal that's beyond anything probably the world's ever undertaken," says Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications at BrightSource Energy, a company that hopes to build 2,600 megawatts-worth of power plants that use the sun's heat to generate electricity.
Here are 10 massive projects already producing energy.
Slide Show: The World's 10 Largest Renewable Energy Projects
See what we're tweeting about
29 Comments
Add Commentthe last one is labeled "bonus," my friend. around here, we're all about throwing in a little something extra.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-- the author
I like the idea of using wind energy. However, I've read that these wind catchers that look so graceful in photos make a horrible noise. I read that they are placed near homes and make life unbearable for humans and animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd if they are placed in areas where humans do not live, what effect do they have on biological organisms of all kinds?
Wind energy sounds so very clean. I'd like to know more about the toll they make take in quality of life and what can be done about that.
I like the idea of using wind energy. However, I've read that these wind catchers that look so graceful in photos make a horrible noise. I read that they are placed near homes and make life unbearable for humans and animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd if they are placed in areas where humans do not live, what effect do they have on biological organisms of all kinds?
Wind energy sounds so very clean. I'd like to know more about the toll they make take in quality of life and what can be done about that.
Probably we must not obtain energy from tidals, someone say that it slows down Earth spinning, thus making days and nights longer
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe I am an idiot, but I would have not noticed it without you warning me, please keep my self-confidence satisfyed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery single one of these can and will at one time use Beacon Power's highspeed Flywheel for Frequency Regulation. They are a ley player in rebuiling the US Power Grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery single one of these can and will at one time use Beacon Power's highspeed Flywheel for Frequency Regulation. They are a ley player in rebuiling the US Power Grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery single one of these can and will at one time use Beacon Power's highspeed Flywheel for Frequency Regulation. They are a key player in rebuilding the US Power Grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd others? Why does this article minimize the impacts of biofuel and geothermal? Geothermal is one of the key solutions to the energy crisis. Demoting them to a slot at the far end of the slideshow with very little recognition doesn't do justice for this industry. Once a geothermal drill is online it produces electricity 24/7!! AND it doesn't take up the extensive space that the wind and solar farms use. AND it doesn't kill birds or fish (major criticisms for wind farms, wave generators, and hydro electric projects). Quit selling the geothermal businesses short, they may not have the strongest PR campaign (for now), but the engineers and business owners in the geothermal industry are true renewable energy pioneers!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not consider clean coal technology?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lot of people dont know exactly what clean coal technology is, so Ill fill you in: it refers not to any one technology, but to an entire suite of advanced technologies.
During the Americas Power Factuality Tour, weve been traveling around the country talking to the people who are behind the production of cleaner electricity from coal including a stop at the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Wisconsin. Theyve installed a retrofit system that has reduced nitrogen oxide emissions by 90 percent and sulfur dioxide emissions by 95 percent.
In addition, through a pilot project in partnership with Alstom Power, theyre developing the latest in carbon capture technology. Check out http://sn.im/factuality5 to get the facts on clean coal technology once and for all.
Very nice, b ut a lot of non scientific confusion between power and energy, Mw and Mwh...Gw and Gwh... Please, correct it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat? I didn't mention clean coal in my original post about geothermal because there is NO SUCH THING. The term "clean coal" is part of an aggressive PR campaign put on by the money mongers in the coal industry. There is no such thing as clean arsenic, and no amount of "carbon storage" will offset the damage done by the actual coal mining process. Coal isn't a renewable resource anyways, so even if science manages to clean up the process we still only have a finite amount of coal available. Don't try to pitch coal as a solution when anyone who's paying attention can see it's really a HUGE part of the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLast year, I toured Iceland and was impressed by the fact that virtually all of the country's electricity and heat is generated geothermally. Perhaps no single generating facility is the largest, but taken as a whole, their geothermal generating capacity must set some kind of record.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMissing from discussion is wood burning for energy as a means of bypassing the methane created by rotting wood. Methane is 22X more effective as a GWG than CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMissing is that escaped hydrogen will react with atmospheric hydroxyls, thus allowing more methane to remain in the atmosphere. Hydroxyls typically remove methane, but may be reduced.
Missing is the total lifecycle cost of manufacturing the "green" energy devices.
I assume that the output figures you give for wind power generators assume that all the turbines are running. However, I have never seen a wind mill field where more than a few of the turbines were spinning, although there was plenty of wind. This observation includes seeing the large number of turbines in Spain in the highlands between Madrid and Barcelona last week. I have read that about a 30% output is typical. Why?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI assume that the output figures you give for wind power generators assume that all the turbines are running. However, I have never seen a wind mill field where more than a few of the turbines were spinning, although there was plenty of wind. This observation includes seeing the large number of turbines in Spain in the highlands between Madrid and Barcelona last week. I have read that about a 30% output is typical. Why?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA very interesting slide show. My reservation is the emphasis on the very concrete interpretation "the biggest". In particular, the Three Gorges Dam is nothing for technocrats anywhere to be proud of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for what to do instead, a good survey of examples showing how to invest toward authentic sustainability, both in Europe and the USA, is given in "A Smart City Goes Live", in Der Spiegel
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,629392,00.html
The article describes projects which place footprints on built spaces and work toward improving efficiency and responsiveness, by increasing the feedback networks in existing systems as well as installing more capacity, with less environmental impact, in places where the natural environment has already been built over.
FROM TECHNOCRACY TO NET ENERGY ANALYSIS: ENGINEERS,ECONOMISTS AND RECURRING ENERGY THEORIES OF VALUE
by Ernst R. Berndt
WP#1353-82 September 1982
available at
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/2023/SWP-1353-09057784.pdf?sequence=1
Mark Hatfield, Senator from Oregon at the time, is quoted in the Introduction:
"Pragmatically, a way to begin would be to set up a capability
in government to budget according to flows of energy rather
than money. Energy is the all-pervasive underlying currency
of our society."
Of course there are more recent fruits of the 1970's energy crisis. One of the best in my opinion is easily found on Google:
Environmental Accounting Using Emergy: Evaluation of the State of West Virginia
by Daniel E. Campbell Sherry L. Brandt-Williams
USEPA, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory
www.epa.gov/NHEERL/publications/files/wvevaluationposted.pdf
Energy is the all-pervasive currency of our natural world, both living and nonliving. In the living world, energy harvest and distribution has been decentralised, across the face and depths of the planet, as well as among and within organisms.
The living, evolutionary outcome is the result of over 3 billion years of trial and error, the record of which is stored in the DNA and RNA of all living things. If you are looking at discrete organisms, there is nothing of the individual size or scale of the built world's "worlds largest" power plants. There are sequoias and blue whales, but our vast, intricate systems of energy distribution from smaller sources are by far more common.
Think of a rain forest, and all of the interlocking elements of its habitat, from leaves through soil invertebrates and microbes, and the rivers which carry away the excess rain to riparian ecosystems and built environments downstream.
I am far more interested in the smartest, most resilient systems than I am in the biggest plants.
Energy companies want to increase capacity by building new plants, if possible with subsidies, to enable sell of more power. They are not suited for helping clients to use less energy. The big thing onwards is to save energy by using better technology, find new ways of living, working and acting. The "drivers" behind this movement is not Energy Companies. The quickest way is to put more tax on gasoline. People will then drive less and require more fuel efficient cars. That will drive the technology development. That is important!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnergy companies want to increase capacity by building new plants, if possible with subsidies, to enable sell of more power. They are not suited for helping clients to use less energy. The big thing onwards is to save energy by using better technology, find new ways of living, working and acting. The "drivers" behind this movement is not Energy Companies. The quickest way is to put more tax on gasoline. People will then drive less and require more fuel efficient cars. That will drive the technology development. That is important!
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi,
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Davmosh
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIceland produces over 80% of its electrical power via hydroelectric power plants, not geothermal plants. Reference wikipedia.org/list of countries by elec. production from renewable energy soureces. It shows that hydroelectric plants produce 7019 MW of electricity; geothermal plants produce 1658 MW of electricity.
I don't know why people continually claim Iceland produces the majority of its electricity using geothermal. Did your tour guide state this?
I Am with the idea of using nuclear energy, it is more productive and tested already in the field
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee also
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=1479461
Wind power is a complete disaster
by Michael J. Trebilcock
I think China's Three Gorges Dam deserves recognition for its power production and control of very destructive river flooding. It is of the scale the world and China need. Geothermal has a good future too, in the Ring of Fire nations, Italy, and the Yellowstone caldera (which is an intolerable unmanaged volcanic hazard to the US, an order of magnitude greater hazard in frequency compared to equally damaging meteor strikes).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWE need "Forever Clean Energy, America" and 2.5M "forever jobs"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article forgets that electricity is not the only source of energy in the world, as it only lists electrical projects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrazil�s sugarcane generates more power than all its hydroelectric plants.
That means it produces far more energy than the Three Gorges here listed
Yet it is not included.
This article forgets that electricity is not the only source of energy in the world, as it only lists electrical projects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrazil´s sugarcane generates more power than all its hydroelectric plants according to its Ministry of Energy study.
That means it produces far more energy than the Three Gorges here listed
Yet it is not included.