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Thanks for that link, pretty illuminating. For anyone curious, breakdown of US power generation in 2021 was (4200 TWh total): Coal : 22% Natural Gas : 38%

• tialaramex 5y ago
  There are also projects to tear out hydro dams, especially smaller ones, because they are ecologically destructive. So while huge dams may generate enough power to justify the ecological cost, a 1MW dam on some relatively minor river may not justify its existence and so it gets torn back out to enable the river to be restored. You can put a bunch of solar panels on malls and office blocks and make up a big chunk of that power without destroying a river, the malls and offices are already our fault because we put them there, so adding solar panels probably doesn't worsen the impact.
  • doikor 5y ago
    A lot of the small dams are also very old and would require a lot of money to keep them running so just tearing them down often turns out to be cheaper long term.
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Two issues with hydro: 1) Most of the obvious places have dams already and building new dams is a combination of expensive and disruptive. 2) Droughts and water shortages make the existing hydro plants less productive. E.g. the hoover dam has some issues with that in recent years.
• long_time_gone 5y ago
  I found it most interesting that "Other Renewables" (i.e. solar and wind) went from ~5% to ~15% in just 10 years. If we can triple capacity again in the next 10 years, we could completely eliminate coal (assuming storage can solve load issues).