Recent assertions from Rocky Mountain Institute:
- If America used electricity only as efficiently as the top ten states averaged just four years ago, five-eighths of U.S. coal-fired electricity would become unnecessary.
- Using electricity fully cost-effectively would save even more, displacing all coal power and more.
- Windpower in available windy sites can displace all U.S. coal power at least four times over (or all Chinese electricity at least twice over); just the windpower stuck today in the interconnection queue could save half of U.S. coal power.
- We could save two-fifths of the coal power by properly exploiting industrial co-generation, plus a lot more in buildings.
- A third of coal power could be replaced immediately by running already-built but partly-idle combined-cycle gas plants more and coal plants less (at an extra cost many-fold less than displacing coal with new nuclear plants).
“Getting off coal requires nowhere near all these steps, let alone the many other attractive options,” Amory Lovins said. “We just need to apply part of what we know.”