Texas trying to win Wind and Sun
“Texas, already the U.S. state with the most wind energy capacity, is catching up to California in utility-scale solar capacity, according to a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday.
“California currently has the most installed utility-scale solar capacity of any state - about 16 gigawatts (GW).”
Every three gigawatts powers the equivalent of one million homes: three million homes but only 1/3 of the time.
EIA projected Texas will add a record 10 GW of utility-scale solar capacity by the end of 2022, compared with 3.2 GW in California. A third of all U.S. utility-scale solar capacity planned to come online in the next two years (30 GW) will be in Texas.
The bigger picture:
“President Joe Biden's administration wants all U.S. power to come from non-carbon-emitting sources like nuclear and renewables by 2035.
“Solar is expected to make up the largest share of capacity additions in Texas between 2020 and 2022, with almost half of the additions, compared with 35% for wind and 13% for gas, according to EIA projections.”
A whole blog post about Texas without mentioning the word ‘oil’ once!
The times they are a-changin’.