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US Renewable Energy Usage to Double by 2050
Advances in wind and solar will increase US renewable’s market share from 21% in 2021 to 44% in 2050, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Hydropower’s contribution remains largely unchanged through 2050, and other renewable sources of power generation, such as geothermal and biomass, collectively remain less than 3% of the renewable total.
US Renewable Energy Usage to Double by 2050
Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government
Source: www.eia.gov
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Paul ,
Don't mean to nitpick but your title says renewables usage will double by 2050. However, the EIA outlook says renewables share will grow from 21% to 44%. Since total generation is growing by a substantial amount renewables usage according to EI is almost tripling - going from 880TWh in 2021 to about 2,400 TWh by 2050.
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Of course even that is an underestimate of where renewables will be by 2050 - 28 years from now. Here are the two primary reason why...
1) There won't be any coal generation left in 2050 - EIA still has coal generation at 500 TWh in 2050. That coal generation will be replaced by either renewables or nuclear.
2) EIA dramatically underestimates the amount of EVs which will be on the road by 2050. to illustrate this you can look at chart that shows predicted yearly sales of Electric vehicles. In the below you can see that EIA predicts that EV( Electric + Plug in Electric Hybrid) sales in US will go from 480K in 2021 to 964K by 2029. In other words, they are saying that it will take 8 years for annual EV sales in US to double. That does not pass the "smell test". In the real world, EV sales will double by 2024 - 2 years.
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With no coal generation and higher overall demand due to more EVs than EIA is predicting - renewables generation will be substantially higher than 2,400 TWh by 2050.
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