News
How waves could power a clean energy future
Waves off the coast of the U.S. could generate 2.64 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity per year — that’s about 64% of last year’s total utility-scale electricity generation in the U.S.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
State of Play
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.