Obama states in his Obama-Biden Plan that he wants to “Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.” The data in NRG Expert’s Power_Generator_Database reveals that this would require around 104,000MW to come from renewable sources in 2012. Max Krangle, Managing Director of NRG Expert has consulted his team of energy analysts and revealed that renewable energy generation capacity has indeed increased by more than 10%. In fact according to the NRG Expert figures renewable energy generation capacity increased to 16.25% to 177,500 MW. (2009-2012)
To compile this number, NRG Expert researched the annual capacity of pumped storage, conventional hydro, wind, solar thermal, solar PV, biomass, MSW and other waste, geothermal and ocean/tidal capacity.
However, although the president has also stated that he's "doubled" ... the generation of renewable energy" since 2009, this is only true for certain types of renewable energy according to NRG Expert's data. When reviewing the Power Generator Database, NRG Expert reveals that for wind energy and solar PV generation capacity, strong growth has been experienced. Wind energy generation capacity has increased by 57% and Solar PV generation capacity by 48%. Meanwhile biomass and geothermal growth has been slower. Biomass generation capacity has increased by a mere 7% and geothermal generation capacity also increased by just 7% .
While Obama talks about ‘generation capacity’, this refers to the installed generator capacity. In fact renewable sources of energy generally only output about 30% of their installed capacity. NRG Expert therefore also reviewed the net generation numbers. This is the actual energy produced, rather than its potential. If you look at the generation numbers, then NRG Expert’ energy database reveals that solar, tide, and wave net generation increased by an impressive 264% . Effectively this means that the amount of electricity being generated by these renewable energy sources has indeed, seen a huge increase. But solar, tide and wave only produce a small amount of the total renewable energy annual generation.
To summarise then, the US has seen a substantial increase in energy generated from renewable sources over the past 3 years.
NRG Expert is a London and Toronto based energy intelligence and market research publisher. NRG Expert provides up to date energy data, information and analysis on worldwide energy markets, including electricity, natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewable energy, water and waste, and all elements of energy infrastructure.