http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/26/politics/clinton-climate-change-renewable-energy/
As part of her Presidential campaign, wisely started a year and a half before the Presidential election, Hillary Clinton has pledged that:
- by the end of her first term there would be 500 million solar panels installed across the USA. This would be about one and a half panels per person.
- that she would set the nation on a “path” to be producing enough renewable energy to power every home across the USA by 2027. (This date would be two years after she left office even if she won two terms.)
- to greatly improve energy efficiency
Her plan does seem quite solar heavy, and the reference to solar panels suggests that it will be specificially photovoltaic heavy. I suppose a lot can happen in a few years but currently in the US, as elsewhere, windpower and solar thermal are giving better bang per buck than photovoltaics.
Nothing I’ve seen has included specific details on the power rating of these panels in this plan. It seems odd for her to commit to such a specific figure for one particular technology this early in the piece.
With regard to the second part:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#/media/File:LLNLUSEnergy2012.png
In 2012, about 5% of the USA’s energy use was household electrical (150 GW mean), so this promise is probably not as big an ask as you might think.
Renewables in the USA already add up to circa 70 GW mean. The USA’s population grows quite strongly but the per capita household electrical energy consumption is pretty flat lately. In 2027 we could anticipate household electrical consumption to be 175 GW mean, on current trend.
However, an argument could be made that this is a low estimate. If electric heating usage increases, then this could blow right out. I’m not sure whether electric car charging at home will count towards (or rather against) Clinton’s goal. On the other hand, a great improvement in efficiency could so it decrease.
Over the 12 year time line, old power plants are going to be retired anyway. The added cost of the renewables program will be the difference between the mean “business as usual” power plant (which will be a weighted average of the current mix of fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables), and 100% renewables. This difference would amount to approximately 2 USD per mean watt, or about 210 billion USD, which is an inconsequential amount in the scheme of an economy whose cumulative GDP over this 12 year time line is going to be about 350 trillion USD.
Moreover: renewables have been growing strongly anyway. If you’d asked me to estimate, based on current trends, the year in which renewable energy production in the USA exceeded the household electrical energy consumption in the USA, I would probably have guessed around 2030 anyway, without any specific extra program.
In summary this is a modest aim.