The New Rules Project just released a comprehensive new report containing some interesting results:
The data in this report, while preliminary, suggest that at least half of the fifty states could meet all their internal energy needs from renewable energy generated inside their borders, and the vast majority could meet a significant percentage. And these estimates may well be conservative.
This is not for your idle interest — it’s in service of a point that the New Rules folks have been tirelessly making for years now: "Homegrown energy is almost always cheaper than imports, especially when you factor in social, environmental and economic benefits." That means Middle Eastern imports, but also renewables imported from neighboring states.
I’ve been pondering some issues in this vicinity — the notion that distributed energy has social and, for lack of a better word, democratic benefits that ought to count in our cost comparisons. Pending me thinking it through, though, read the full report [PDF].
