Fun facts about renewable energy
In 1998, only 7.5 percent of our nation's energy came from renewable resources, even though the amount of renewable energy available was more than 250 times U.S. energy consumption.
If your family could use only renewable energy for all your energy needs, you could help reduce the amount of emissions in the air each year by 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 70 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 50 pounds of nitrogen oxide.
By year-end 2003, Alliant Energy’s utility customers will use seven percent of the nation’s available wind power.
Water is currently the most commonly used renewable energy resource, providing enough power to meet the needs of 28.3 million consumers.
Biomass currently supplies about four percent of the energy produced in the U.S., and could potentially provide almost 20 percent.
Energy crops, like switchgrass or fast-growing trees, could provide more than 5,000 megawatts of electricity annually by the year 2010, supporting more than 170,000 jobs and diversifying local farming operations.
Wind farms currently produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 600,000 families.
The U.S. Department of Energy expects wind power to supply at least five percent of the nation's electricity by 2020.
In 1990 in California alone, wind power offset the emission of more than 2.5 billion pounds of carbon dioxide and 15 million pounds of other pollutants - the same amount of air quality provided by more than 150 million trees.
Technological innovations have brought the cost of wind power down from more than 30 cents per kilowatt-hour during the 1980s to less than six cents per kilowatt-hour today.
More than 10,000 homes in the United States are powered entirely by solar energy.
According to the American Solar Energy Society, enough sunlight falls on the earth's surface each minute to meet world energy demand for an entire year.
Replacing an electric water heater with a solar model can reduce water heat costs by 50 to 80 percent every year - and over the 20-year life of the equipment, more than 50 tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be displaced.
Silicon from one ton of sand, used in photovoltaic cells, could produce as much electricity as burning 500,000 tons of coal.
Geothermal energy currently provides more than 2,700 megawatts of electricity nationwide - the equivalent of three nuclear power plants, or enough to power more than 3.5 million homes.
A geothermal power plant emits no nitrogen oxides, very few sulfur dioxides and 1,000 to 2,000 times less carbon dioxide than a fossil fuel plant. |
