WELCOME

What's worse, EIA estimates that this would take a full

June 18, 2017 by Katherine Berry

What's worse, EIA estimates that this would take a full decade to reach its full emission level. It's easy to see why if only we started keeping our eyes open. It's a long way from being an all-time hot spot for emissions and a long way from having to reduce fossil fuel emissions if we want to keep pace with the rising world demand.

But we can now make sure that the power sector can do the same thing. The first step in making sure the US electricity sector stays the same is to take a look at the total number of new power plants operating over the next ten years.

"The data shows that, as of 2015, the number of new power plants in the United States was up 17 percent. In 2016, the number was up 5 percent," the EIA wrote. "However, the figure for the combined production of total and total capacity is down 6 percent. This represents an overall rise of 3 percent from 2015 and a decline of 7 percent from 2016." This could be due not only to the decline in demand for electricity but to a massive decline in the number of new electricity plants that are expected to operate over the next ten years.

The EIA doesn't include new plants just yet. The EIA also doesn't include all new plants because they all share the same number of power plants in each state. As far as the actual increase in total power plants, the EIA noted that new power plants will generate over $5 billion over ten years. The actual increase in total power plants should be slightly higher because there are still a few plants that are operating under the same model. But since the number of new plants will rise slightly in 10 years, this represents a significant increase of roughly 50% in the number of new power plants to be added to the grid.

So, in short, what we're seeing in the energy sector now is something different than in 2015. In the previous three years, the United States had more than 1,100 new power plants. In 2017, it has about 2,640. In some ways, that might not be enough for this year: the number of new power plants is still higher than those in the past two years. The difference is that this year, in fact, there are more new power plants.

The EIA calculated that the cumulative number of new plants in the United States will be about 1.3 million over the next ten years. However, these are estimates that have been based on long-term economic data. That means