{"id":6148,"date":"2021-01-07T11:30:08","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T11:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=147138"},"modified":"2021-01-07T11:30:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T11:30:08","slug":"can-a-city-truly-be-100-renewable-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/07\/can-a-city-truly-be-100-renewable-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Can a city truly be 100% renewable? It\u2019s complicated."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2014, Burlington, Vermont, the birthplace of Ben and Jerry\u2019s ice cream and the stomping grounds of Senator Bernie Sanders, announced that it had reached an energy milestone<\/a>. The city of 42,000, which hugs the shore of Lake Champlain, produced enough power from renewable sources to cover all its electricity needs. Burlington, the city government proclaimed, was one of America\u2019s first \u201crenewable cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Burlington has been joined by Georgetown, Texas<\/a>, Aspen, Colorado<\/a>, and a few other small towns across the country. And though some cities have a head start \u2014 Burlington benefits from a huge amount of hydroelectric power and ample wood for biomass burning \u2014 many that rely on fossil fuels for power are joining in. Today, more than 170 cities and towns<\/a> across the U.S. have promised to shift their power supply from coal and natural gas to solar, wind, and hydropower. St. Louis<\/a>, which currently gets only 11 percent of its power from renewables, says that it will run purely on renewables by 2035; coal-dependent Denver<\/a> has promised to do the same by 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities are setting these goals and striving to go from a very small percentage of renewables to 100 percent on an extremely ambitious timeline,\u201d said Lacey Shaver, city renewable energy manager at the World Resources Institute, via email. \u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for city energy work.\u201d<\/p>\n

But are 100 percent renewable cities actually \u2026 100 percent renewable? The reality is a bit complicated \u2014 and it shows the challenges of true, \u201cdeep\u201d decarbonization of electricity in the United States.<\/p>\n

First, shifting to clean electricity doesn\u2019t mean that a city zeroes out its carbon footprint \u2014 residents could still be driving gas-guzzling cars or heating their homes with natural gas. Even most claims of running on \u201cclean\u201d electricity come with caveats: What cities actually mean is that they purchase enough electricity from wind, solar, or other clean sources to balance out the power that they use over the course of the year. For places filled with renewables, like Vermont, that\u2019s not such a big deal. But in other areas, a city might not be using all renewable electricity in real-time. Even when the sun isn\u2019t shining and the wind isn\u2019t blowing, electrons still need to be flowing through the grid to keep the lights on. And at the moment, a lot of that more consistent energy comes from non-renewable sources, mainly natural gas and coal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no city that operates as an island in electricity,\u201d said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. \u201cYou\u2019re going to be connected to a larger grid.\u201d There\u2019s no such thing as \u201cfossil fuel electrons\u201d and \u201crenewable electrons\u201d \u2014 all power mixes together once it reaches the grid. That means even a 100 percent renewable town might, from time to time, be sourcing its electricity from fossil fuels. Because of this, Rhodes says that goals to run purely on renewables are more like accounting mechanisms than a pure description of a city\u2019s energy sources.<\/p>\n

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