Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

‘Math Doesn’t Yet Add Up’ for Utility Decarbonization Goals: Deloitte

GreenTech Media: U.S. utilities can’t reach their ambitious decarbonization goals unless they reduce their planned reliance on natural gas, find ways to “baseload” solar and wind power with long-duration storage or substitute zero-carbon fuels, and radically expand energy efficiency, demand response and the power and flexibility of customer-owned distributed energy resources.

So says a new report from Deloitte highlighting the known, yet often underappreciated, challenges faced by utilities across the country promising to zero out their carbon impact by midcentury. “The math doesn’t yet add up,” the report finds, citing “significant gaps” between the decarbonization targets of major utilities and their current plans for retiring fossil-fuel plants.

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