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Banks Continue to Prop Up the Fossil Fuel Industry

Union of Concerned Scientists

Last month, the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) reported that London-based HSBC, one of the world’s top-10 biggest banks, has helped raise $47 billion for the fossil fuel industry since its 2022 announcement that it would not finance new gas and oil infrastructure. degrees Celsius, or 2.7

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Progress Possible at COP 28 Despite Fossil Fuel Industry Deception

Union of Concerned Scientists

Last week, I joined my colleagues at COP28 in Dubai , as negotiators and civil society push for a fossil fuel phaseout to meet climate goals. The industry is pushing a narrative that misleadingly calls out emissions , not fossil fuels as the problem. Source: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

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Good News—and Bad—about Fossil Fuel Power Plants in 2023 

Union of Concerned Scientists

With the clean energy transition already under way, the US electricity mix is set to continue changing this year. Solar power is expected to make up about half of all additions of US electric generating capacity in 2023, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). I’ll start off with the good.

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How Much Land Would it Require to Get Most of Our Electricity from Wind and Solar?

Union of Concerned Scientists

A recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study shows that it would take less than 1 percent of the land in the Lower 48—that’s an area comparable to or even smaller than the fossil fuel industry’s current footprint. Examining Supply-Side Options to Achieve 100% Clean Electricity by 2035.)

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Storm Elliott Knocked Out Fossil-Fuel Power. We’ve Been Here Before.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Utilities and grid operators prepared for the storm as it was coming down the pike, but they still underestimated the energy demand it would trigger, as well as the number of outages at fossil fuel power plants—mainly natural gas-fired, plus some coal-fired plants.

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Minnesota: Will This Be the Year for a 100-Percent Carbon-Free Electricity Policy?

Union of Concerned Scientists

Now it’s on to the state Senate, where the question is: Will this be the year Minnesota sets a path toward 100-percent carbon-free electricity? From a countrywide perspective, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a study in August 2022 identifying multiple pathways to a net-zero power grid by 2035.

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Renewables Have Pulled Ahead of Coal. What’s Next?

Union of Concerned Scientists

There’s good news in the recently released official data on electricity generation in the United States in 2022: renewable energy has continued to grow, coal power has continued to drop, and renewables are now firmly ahead of coal for the first time ever. percent of the country’s electricity supply (up 1.1 It supplied 10.5