This is not a passing fad. Last fall, the U.K. announced it would phase out all of its coal-fired power plants by 2025. According to the most recent data, the electricity sector accounts for nearly a third of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. (That is similar to the rate in the United States.)
The news from the U.K. is not all good, though. The government plans on transitioning much of its generation to natural gas — which it intends to get by fracking large swaths of the country — and has recently cut subsidies to solar and made it more difficult to develop onshore wind power generation.
Hydro, wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal sources made up nearly a fifth of all the electricity generated in the United States in March, according to new data from the Energy Information Administration. While renewables did not surpass coal nationally, they did in Texas, and the trend is clearly bending in favor of clean energy.
Worldwide, renewable energy just keeps growing. Last year saw more renewable energy generation installed than ever before, recent data showed. And in May, Portugal ran for four straight days on renewable energy alone.
During last month, coal generation fell to zero on several days — possibly the first time that has happened since the country
introduced widespread electrification in the late 1800s, according to analysis from Carbon Brief, a U.K.-based energy tracker.
Curated from Rainy U.K. Gets More Power From Solar Than Coal For The First Time In Over A Century | ThinkProgress
