Solar With Storage Surges as Gas Falls

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/08/08/solar-storage-surges-gas-falls

There’s good news – outside of North Carolina – in the increasingly desperate fight to slow the climate crisis before its own momentum makes acceleration unstoppable. Economical storage, the long-sought Holy Grail of renewable energy, is surging in the marketplace while climate-wrecking fracked “natural” gas has begun to decline.

North Carolina is held back by Duke Energy executives’ obsession with gas and their obstructionist strategy toward solar and storage as they cling to the increasingly risky plan to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and some 20 gas-fired power plants.

The difference? Market competition versus monopoly capture of customers, public and civic leaders, and public debate.

Solar-with-storage projects are surging in many states by beating gas plants on economics and reliability. By 2026, the U.S. is expected to add storage capacity equal to 35 nuclear plants, generating $4 billion in annual savings. Some big utilities are already replacing gas with batteries, while gas-plant construction divisions of General Electric and Siemens are collapsing and Bloomberg’s headline proclaims that “Natural Gas Drillers are Fighting for their Lives.” Gas will keep declining as people realize it’s even worse than coal for the climate because much of it leaks, unburned, into the air.

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