Extreme Weather Causing Higher Energy Usage Even As Renewables Grow

Two new reports from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) summarizing energy usage trends for the first part of 2014 were released this week.

The first was EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, which provides data on electricity usage through the end of April. The second was EIA’s Monthly Energy Review, which provides usage data in all sectors (including transportation and heating) for the first quarter of the year.

In a nutshell, renewables are growing but not as quickly as carbon emissions. During the first four months of the year, renewables provided 14.05% of all electricity generated nationwide. That’s a level that wasn’t expected to be seen until 2040. No longer can anyone say that renewables provide an insignificant portion of our energy needs. No one expected them to grow this quickly.

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Image credit: Turbat N: Flickr Creative Commons

RP Siegel, author and inventor, shines a powerful light on numerous environmental and technological topics. He has been published in business and technical journals and has written three books. His third, co-authored with Roger Saillant, is Vapor Trails, an eco-thriller that is being adapted for the big screen. RP is a professional engineer – and a prolific inventor, with 50 patents, numerous awards, and several commercial products. He is president of Rain Mountain LLC and is an active environmental advocate in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y. In addition to Justmeans, he writes for Triple Pundit, ThomasNet News, and Energy Viewpoints, occasionally contributing to Mechanical Engineering, Strategy + Business, and Huffington Post. You can follow RP on Twitter, @RPSiegel.