In June, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
released a groundbreaking new study showing that the United
States could generate 80 percent of its electricity from
renewable energy by 2050 with commercially available
technologies, while meeting electricity demand in every hour of
the year and every region of the country. The study also found
that a high renewable electricity future would result in deep
reductions in power plant carbon emissions and water use at
costs comparable to other studies. As one of 140 peer reviewers
of this massive four-volume, 850-page Renewable Electricity
Futures Study, it is arguably the most comprehensive analysis of
a high renewable electricity future in the U.S. to date. It
provides unprecedented geographic and time resolution for long-
term studies of the U.S. power sector. It also includes a
detailed assessment of the costs, challenges, and opportunities
for each renewable energy technology and uses state-of-the-art
modeling to show how they can be effectively integr