According to the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook 2024, released in the third week of February 2024, demand for renewable energy such as solar and wind has now reached nearly 25% of all demand. Greenhouse gas emissions for the United States reached an historic low — nearly as low as that reached during the deepest slowdowns of the Covid pandemic.
Wind and solar power are now producing enough energy to power over 60 million American homes.
When including nuclear power, the percentage of energy provided by zero-carbon output options reached 41%, compared to 31% a decade ago.
This is a part of the Problem Solvers series of essays on this site. Inspired by Steve Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, our mission is to highlight recent news about how humans are solving problems, or working toward solutions to problems, that vex us. Pinker points out that we are often blind to the fact that humans have been solving problems for hundreds of years. At Enter the Net, we think this is because solutions are not celebrated by a society that is already moving on to the next problems.
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This does sound like good news. Thank you for sharing. I’m pretty sure you’re going to get some deniers, naysayers, and people who refuse to acknowledge progress. Also, maybe it’s not so bad that we skip over adding ours on the back and move on to solving the next problem, or continuing to work on solving this one.