kublikhan wrote:The majority of voters do support clean energy:As U.S. Election Nears, Polling Shows 82 Percent of Voters Support 100 Percent Clean Energy TransitionNew polling released Tuesday shows the vast majority of U.S. voters believe the nation should be prioritizing a transition to 100% clean energy and support legislation to decarbonize the economy over the next few decades. Pollsters found that 82% of voters somewhat (33%) or strongly (49%) agree that "the primary goal of U.S. energy policy should be achieving 100% clean energy."Survey Finds Majority of Voters Support Initiatives to Fight Climate ChangeA majority of registered voters of both parties in the United States support initiatives to fight climate change, including many that are outlined in the climate plans announced by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to a new survey.
The survey, which was conducted after the presidential election, suggests that a majority of Americans in both parties want a government that deals forcefully with climate change instead of denying its urgency — or denying that it exists.
In the survey, published Friday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 53 percent of registered voters said that global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress, and 66 percent said that developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority.
Eight in 10 supported achieving those ends by providing tax breaks to people who buy electric vehicles or solar panels, and by investing in renewable energy research. “These results show there’s very strong public support for bold, ambitious action on climate change and clean energy.”
And dirty power plants are closing:In 1990, coal-fired power plants accounted for about 42% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generating capacity and about 52% of total electricity generation. By the end of 2020, coal's share of electricity generating capacity was at 20% and coal accounted for 19% of total utility-scale electricity generation.
And the US GHG energy emissions are falling as well. They were around 6 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2007. This has fallen to just over 5 million metric tons in 2019.
That is rather deceptive because a large proportion of voters believe "Natural Gas" is "Clean Energy". In addition a large part of the fall in American CO2 emissions has to do with converting at least some of the largest Coal fired electric power plants to burn Natural Gas as substitute fuel while still retaining the option of burning coal if their is a break in the gas supply. If 20% of coal power plants switch to burning Natural Gas your emissions drop by 10%. If in addition you close some very old Coal plants as was done under the Obama Administration (and long past due) that also eliminated some of the least efficient coal burners completely. Between the two effects the USA is actually consuming more electricity in 2021 than 2007 but the fuel source has shifted from Coal to Gas.