“Plummeting wind, solar, and storage prices have fallen so fast that the United States can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035—without raising customer costs at all from today’s levels, and actually decreasing wholesale power costs 10 percent.
Building a 90 percent clean electricity system by 2035 would catalyze massive economic growth that helps pull the U.S. out of the COVID-19 recession by supporting more than a half million new net jobs per year, injecting $1.7 trillion into the economy, and recharging domestic manufacturing.” 1
The quotes above come from an article in Forbes magazine, the last bastion of capitalism, reporting on a recently released Goldman School of Public Policy study. Diving into the link of the report itself, https://www.2035report.com/data-explorer/, the authors have conjectured how exactly each state can achieve 90 percent by 2035; for Idaho, 46 percent of Idaho energy mix would be coming from utility-scale solar farms, 9 percent from wind farms, 35 percent hydro, and 9 percent natural gas.
Idaho is uniquely suited to add wind and solar farms, as it has an abundance of those resources occurring naturally and it has an incredible amount of public lands on which to build them, with 62.8 percent of its land public lands. Another report details the multiplier effect on an economy of developing renewables, “The best available data show that rent and royalty payments from renewable energy development on public lands have contributed over $660 million in 2019 dollars to federal, state and local governments since 1982. This report concludes that the capital costs for construction of the renewable energy projects operating on public lands have contributed over $13 billion in 2019 dollars to the economy since 1996. Estimates show that these projects have created over 12,000 construction jobs and over 1,700 operations and maintenance jobs.” 2
Forbes author Silvo Marcacci also notes the job-creating aspect of developing renewable energy, “Adding all this clean energy would support approximately 9 million new net job-years in the energy sector through 2035, totaling 530,000 more jobs per year compared to business-as-usual, in every corner of the country. Clean energy jobs offer higher wages than the average economy, can’t be outsourced, and are widely available to workers without college degrees, opening up economic opportunity for all Americans.”
What’s not to like? Getting to 90 percent by 2035 would mean cheaper power for consumers, jobs for American workers, tax revenue to state and local governments, and economic recovery. Not only can Idaho’s governor seize this opportunity, but our local government bodies should, too. If you need one more piece of information to cap the case, here’s one more quote from the Forbes article: “90% clean electricity would create massive public health benefits alongside this sustained economic growth and prevent 85,000 premature deaths from power plant emissions by 2050. Emissions would be virtually eliminated from the U.S. power sector: CO2 emissions would be reduced 1,300 million metric tons (88%) by 2035, while nitrogen oxide emissions would fall 96% and sulfur dioxide emissions would be cut 99%.” 3
2 https://cbey.yale.edu/key-economic-benefits-of-renewable-energy-on-public-lands