Citizens Action Coalition Education Fund

The harnessing of water was the only widely used renewable electricity technology before the 1980s. Hydropower is still one of the most significant sources of renewable energy, producing 20% of the world’s electricity and 10% of that of the United States. "The 1973 oil crisis awoke the country to its vulnerability through dependence on foreign oil. Subsequent changes in federal policy spurred the development of renewable technologies other than hydro."

Renewable energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass, play a small but significant role in our current energy policy, and will play a much larger role as the increasing financial, environmental and health costs of a "business as usual" approach make the move to a "low carbon" policy more attractive.

• Renewable energy resources represented 7% of the total energy consumed in the United States in 2006. "Consistent with historical patterns, the electric power sector consumed the majority (56%) of renewable energy. . . . The industrial sector consumer 28%, with the transportation and commercial sectors using the remainder."
• Of the total renewable energy consumption, biomass represented 48%, followed by hydroelectric (42%), geothermal (5%), wind (4%) and solar (1%).

"Current levels of renewables development represent only a tiny fraction of what could be developed. Many regions of the world and the United States are rich in renewable resources. Winds in the United States contain energy equivalent to 40 times the amount of energy the nation uses. The total sunlight falling on the country is equivalent to 500 times America’s energy demand. And accessible geothermal energy adds up to 15,000 times national demand. Of course, there are limits to how much of this potential can be used, because of competing land uses, competing costs from other energy sources, and limits to the transmission system needed to bring energy to end users."

• Union of Concerned Scientists, Clean Energy, Increasing Renewables:Costs and Benefits, (last revised 8/10/05), found at: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy_basics/increasing-renewables-costs-and-benefits.html.
• U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Renewable Energy Consumption and Electricity, Preliminary 2006 Statistics, (August, 2007), found at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/pretrends.pdf.