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Renewable Energy

Power plants are the nation’s worst industrial air polluters.
More than 85 percent of the energy generated in the United States comes from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.1 Fossil fuel burning power plants are responsible for 76 percent of sulfur dioxide, 59 percent of nitrogen oxides, and 37 percent of the mercury released into the environment.2 The production and use of energy causes almost 80 percent of air pollution.3
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels is 
dangerous to America’s health.
A study of mortality in Arizona found that exposure to the pollutants emitted by burning fossil fuels caused a significant increase in death from heart disease.4 Smog triggers more than six million asthma attacks per year and results in 160,000 emergency room visits in the eastern United States alone.5 Sulfur dioxide pollution shortens the lives of an estimated 30,000 Americans per year. And mercury poisoning, often through the consumption of fish from contaminated lakes and rivers, causes serious damage to the human nervous system.6
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes further harm to the environment.
Air pollutants are returned to the Earth in the form of acid rain, which contaminates vegetation and kills aquatic life. Fossil fuels also produce
greenhouse gases that are responsible for the erosion of the ozone layer and have triggered global warming.
Unless policymakers act, air pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants will get much worse.
Total energy consumption in the U.S. is projected to increase more than 40 percent between 2002 and 2025.7
Renewable energy sources are much cleaner than fossil fuels.
Renewable energy—generated by wind, sun, water, plant growth, and geothermal heat—can be cleanly converted into power for everyday use. If we invest in renewable energy, it can supply a significant portion of our energy needs without the negative effects on the environment that are produced by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
The energy market is stacked against renewable energy sources.
Oil, gas and coal companies benefit from government policies that were crafted to promote their success and have led to a virtual monopoly on the market for energy sources. In the absence of counterbalancing government policies, companies that offer renewable energy are at a disadvantage.
States can set “renewable portfolio standards” that require increased use of renewable energy sources.
Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) laws require public utilities to increase their use of renewable energy sources over time. Typically, RPS laws require that, over a period of 20 years, renewable energy be gradually increased until those sources account for ten to 20 percent of total energy production. In addition to reducing pollution, RPS laws decrease states’ dependence on potentially unreliable sources of fossil fuels. With current state RPS laws, it is projected that by 2017, carbon dioxide emissions (the gas most responsible for global warming) will be reduced by nearly 75 million metric tons—the equivalent of removing 11.1 million cars and planting trees in an area larger than West Virginia.8
Twenty-three states have enacted renewable portfolio standards.
In 2005, Delaware, Illinois, Montana and Vermont enacted RPS laws and Texas expanded its highly successful RPS law. Twenty-three states (AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, IA, ME, MD, MA, MN, MT, NV, NJ, NM, NY, PA, RI, TX, VT, WA, WI) have enacted RPS laws. Due to the popularity of these laws, nine percent of the energy consumed nationwide comes from renewable sources.9
Endnotes
  1. U.S. Department of Energy, “Energy Sources: Fossil Fuels,” 2004.
  2. Congressman Bernie Sanders, “Closing the Dirty Old Powerplant Loophole,” July 22, 2003.
  3. State Environmental Resource Center, “RPS Renewable Energy Fact Pack,” 2006.
  4. Therese Mar, Gary Norris, Jane Koenig, and Timothy Larson, “Associations Between Air Pollution and Mortality in Phoenix, 1995-97,” April 2000.
  5. “Closing the Dirty Old Powerplant Loophole.”
  6. Natural Resources Defense Council, “The Bush Administration’s Air Pollution Plan,” June 15, 2003.
  7. U.S. Department of Energy, “Annual Energy Outlook 2004 with Projections to 2025,” September 29, 2004.
  8. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Renewable Electricity Standards at Work in the States,” 2006.
  9. Energy Information Administration, “Renewable Energy Trends—2004 Highlights,” August 2005.
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