“This should prove to be a watershed year for the ‘de-carbonization’ of the US power sector, with record volumes of coal-fired capacity to be shuttered, renewables capacity to be built, and natural gas to be consumed,” BNEF said in a press release, concluding that these three factors will combine to drive carbon emissions from the power sector to their lowest levels since 1994.
First, 2015 is expected to be a record-breaking year for the installation of renewable energy, with around 18 new gigawatts (GW) of power coming online from solar and wind. The previous record, set in 2012, was 17.1 GW, and most of that came from wind plants built ahead of tax credit expirations.
This year will be different, because experts think we’ll see an equal mix of solar and wind projects installed across the country. For years, wind has been leading solar, but solar has been exploding in growth recently thanks to the falling price of solar panels.
According to the report, solar will reach record installations in three areas: utility scale installations, like mega-projects in California, rooftop installations, and non-residential roof-space. This year and 2016 are important years for solar — especially for utility-scale solar — because the federal Investment Tax Credit, which offers a dollar-for-dollar reduction in federal income tax for those who invest in solar projects, is set to fall from 30 percent to 10 percent in 2017, a policy change that will make large-scale solar projects less appealing for investors.
But it’s not just a record number of renewables that BNEF thinks will drive power sector emissions to a 20-year low — it’s also the decline of coal, the most-carbon intensive type of fuel to burn.
Read more at U.S. Power Sector in 2015: More Renewable Energy, Less Carbon Emissions
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