Energy Costs at Record Lows Thanks to Natural Gas & Clean Energy

Scientific American ------ The nation's rapid adoption of clean energy technologies, combined with sustained natural gas consumption, sagging oil prices and the widespread deployment of energy efficiency measures, helped U.S. consumers drive down energy costs to record lows in 2016. Where energy spending occurred, it was concentrated in low- or zero-carbon forms of energy that should help the United States continue the transition to a sustainable energy future, according to a benchmarking report released yesterday morning by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The findings from the "2017 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook," while encouraging to clean energy advocates, also provide a powerful counterweight to claims by some, including in the Trump administration, that U.S. energy costs are being driven higher by the wide-scale adoption of wind, solar and other forms of renewable energy. To the contrary, the analysis finds that steeply falling costs for renewables and other clean energy technologies has made traditional electricity fuels --- namely coal and oil --- less competitive than ever before. For more on energy costs at record lows thanks to natural gas and clean energy click on the picture below to read the article.