Following President Biden’s moves to implement new climate policies upon taking office yesterday;

Will Scargill, Managing Oil and Gas Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the targets set out for decarbonizing the power sector:

“Biden’s target of a carbon-free power sector by 2035 is extremely ambitious and would require a massive acceleration in investment in renewable power generation and energy storage solutions.

“GlobalData’s current outlook for the US power sector sees renewables continuing to achieve rapid growth, increasing their share of total generation from around 20% currently to over 35% by 2035, driven by solar and wind. Fossil fuels, which represent around 60% of generation today, are still expected to contribute half of US power generation as gas generation remains relatively stable while coal declines. The replacement generation needed to phase out fossil fuels would be equivalent to a quadrupling of the growth currently expected in renewables.

“There may be some room to meet the target of a carbon-free power sector while retaining some fossil fuel generation through implementation of carbon capture and storage. However, we would expect such a transition to rely primarily on renewables growth, which would also necessitate a parallel acceleration in energy storage capacity. The ambitious nature of the target does not mean it is unachievable though, as there is still plenty of room for growth in US renewables. In particular, the nascent US offshore wind sector is currently on track to be less than 25% of the size of the European sector by 2030.”