Our administration is firmlycontrolled by fossil fuel intereststhat have rick federal clime action into a tube dreaming . Thankfully , a scrappy striation of multi - billion dollar potbelly are keeping the renewable energy revolution live .
Plucky upstarts like Apple , Facebook , Microsoft , and AT&T are part of a group fo well-nigh 60 companies making major investments in renewable muscularity . allot to the Rocky Mountain Institute ’s Business Renewables Center , they’vealready prepare an annual recordfor renewable Department of Energy procurance this year with four month still to go in 2018 .
Companies have made batch to fund 3.86 gigawatts of renewable power in the U.S. , enough energy to superpower nearly 2 million home . The late platter was determine in 2015 when large corporations procured 3.12 gigawatts of renewable vigour .
The analysis is based on public records like power purchase agreements agree to Alex Klonick , an associate at the Business Renewable Center . That mean most of the projects are n’t completed yet , but they ’ve been signed off on and are in the works .
“ That being said , there is a wide mixture of situations , ” he told Earther . “ Some deals add together content to an already built or in building project , others repower and add capacity to older offline projects . The scalable nature of renewables allows the tractableness in bringing Modern renewables onto the gridiron . ”
dedicate the technical school nature of many of the companies on the list , the power will go toward the voluminous indigence ofkeeping data centers coolheaded . Thus it ’s perhaps no surprise Facebook is the clear leader in 2018 . The societal web signed off on a gigawatt of renewable muscularity , the first company to make that character of investing in a class . AT&T was the secondly biggest thespian , jump on the renewables bandwagon for the first fourth dimension to announce contracts for 820 megawatts of clean energy .
As with all thing corporate , this is n’t some kumbaya - around - the - campfire thing . It ’s about money and keeping employee and customers happy .
On the money front , renewables have never cost less . in the beginning this summer , a Nevada solar farm set a book for thecheapest solar projectin the U.S. Red states are plough ahead with onshore nothingness energy as prices drop , and offshore lead mayfinally be having a moment , too . The price are only expected to keep dribble , create renewables ever more attractive .
society are also attempt to continue employees and keeping client felicitous . Klonick said these group are placing ever more pressure on companies to not be evil ( at least when it arrive to energy , the jury ’s out on other straw man ) .
The record - setting renewable purchases are objectively good news . But here ’s where I must temper it a bit . Companies still have a long road forrader to clean up their energy act .
Apple , for example , announced it pass on 100 per centum renewable DOE in April . But that proclamation negate that their supply chain retain to be a hugesource of greenhouse throttle discharge . ditto mark for a company like Amazon . And while tech and communication currently habituate three to five percent of the cosmos ’s electrical energy , thatcould arise to 20 percentby 2025 as more of the world disregard the sound advice to just log off .
Energy
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