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I see headlines like this and I'm immediately skeptical, because I've done a fair amount of looking into U.S. and World total power production and consumption. http://alextangofuego.blogspot.com/2008/08/brother-can-you-spare-22-terawatts.html
I’m skeptical...I know things are improving, but this seems a bit much...unless they mean 100 “city governments”...okay, so now i'm doing the math... Seattle yes, mostly hydropower...Burlington, VT 55MW (very small) wood-fired with natural gas auto-transfer backup, plus some hydro...I know Aspen is City of Aspen Electric only, with a very small customer base (hydro, 5MW)...and then Eugene, OR - mostly hydro, with some nuke, biomass, wind...88k customers (again, very small)...the rest of the cities are in other countries, and I'm guessing they are very small amounts of power usage/capacity...not many cities/localities in the U.S. are in a position to benefit from hydro or biomass power, unless we start burning our trash, but that's not exactly green/no-carbon...I'll make a guess that the U.S. cities the article cites, and throwing in Aspen, is around 100 megawatts or 0.1 gigawatts...the U.S. total generating capacity is just over 1,000 gigawatts total generating capacity...(note this is nameplate generating capacity in aggregate of all power generating facilities)...
For perspective there are 1308 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. (on 557 sites) with a generating capacity of 310 gigawatts or 310,000 megawatts...460 gigawatts gas/other...just over 1,000 gigawatts total when you throw in nukes, wind, other/experimental...
Renewables/green power plants are a hugely small fraction of our total power production/consumption...well, okay now that I actually look it up, renewables are 215 gigawatts, so call it 22%...(Includes conventional hydroelectric, geothermal, wood, wood waste, all municipal waste, landfill gas, other biomass, solar, and wind power. Facilities co-firing biomass and coal are classified as coal.)...so we have a long way to go, and keep in mind all burning of wood/waste, etc are producing CO2 which is the gas that causes anthropomorphic climate disruption...
here is the link to the source article...
https://www.cdp.net/en/cities/world-renewable-energy-cities
and here is the link to the USEIA data that I used...
https://goo.gl/Yg9Hqk
And finally, my point is that these articles are somewhat misleading to the general public (and what, there are 10 of us actually reading and pondering these articles?)...I think that most people think we are making headway by leaps and bounds in the march towards renewables/green/solar/wind/tidal energy sources...and hence the fight against global warming...but we are not...especially with the addition of 3-4 million people being born each year...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183481/united-states-population-projection/
Baby steps are good...but we have a long, long, long way to go...and it will involve severe cuts to our usage of power, something no one ever talks about...along with over-population...
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