Global electricity demand could increase by 30 percent to 75 percent of current capacity by 2050, according to a US energy agency.
The nation’s utilities generated 5 percent more electricity during the first six months of 2024 than the first half of 2023 because of a hotter-than-normal start to summer and increasing power demands from the commercial sector, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported in its July Short-Term Energy Outlook.
Some fear intermittent renewable energy from the sun, the wind, water pressure, or geothermal steam cannot reliably keep pace with rapidly growing energy demands without redundant fossil fuel generation unless, or until, battery storage and transmission technologies advance.
Renewable energy sources—solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydro—constitute nearly 95 percent of that added capacity and now generate more than 21 percent of the nation’s electricity, eclipsing coal as a source last year, the EIA said.
The EIA projects that global electricity demand could increase between 30 percent to more than 75 percent of current capacity by 2050, with as much as two-thirds of electricity to come from nuclear and renewables.
The agency projects U.S. power plants will produce 2 percent more electricity during the second half of 2024 than in 2023, with solar power adding 36 billion kilowatt-hours, a 42-percent increase over the new solar power added in all of 2023.
With the additions, the sun now generates nearly 4 percent of utility-scale electricity and powers 7 percent of the nation’s homes, the EIA said, citing solar energy as the nation’s “fastest-growing U.S. source” for electricity generation.
The Washington-based Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), which did not return requests for comment from The Epoch Times, maintains that renewable energies are poised to dramatically accelerate, especially solar power.
SEIA in May announced there are 5 million solar installations now generating electricity nationwide, a 400-percent increase in less than a decade.
“This milestone comes just eight years after the U.S. reached 1 million installations in 2016,” SEIA said in a press release, noting it took more than 40 years to get to 1 million installations after the first one came online in 1973.
By John Haughey
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