US Electricity Market

Currently, U.S. electricity generation is both dirty and, in the Company’s opinion, strategically dangerous. Of the 800,000 MW of generating capacity in the U.S., approximately 50% comes from coal, 20% comes from gas or petroleum products, and 20% comes from nuclear. Due to the reliance on electricity of the U.S. economy, as the economy expands, so does the need for more generation capacity at the same rate. Thus, a 3% annual growth in economic activity in the U.S. will lead to an additional 24,000 MW of electricity demand each year. All types of generation are therefore needed to meet this ever-increasing appetite for electricity, including all forms of clean and renewable energy.

Each of the fossil fuels has costs to our society: While the U.S. has a steady supply of coal and nuclear fuel, gas and oil come increasingly from overseas. And, despite its availability, coal is a dirty fuel with either high waste emissions or expensive removal devices embedded into the cost of the power. Additionally, coal mining is not an environmentally-friendly undertaking. Though nuclear power is clean from an emissions point of view, there is a multi-century waste disposal issue, and safety concerns associated with nuclear power.

Renewable energy will NOT be a panacea for these issues, at least not right away. The U.S. economy demands too much energy, and the infrastructure for all these other fuels is already in place. However, if a significant amount of the incremental energy demands can be met by clean and renewable projects, many economic, strategic and environmental benefits will be realized. Just a few of them are:

	•	A single 100 MW wind project will completely displace (even accounting for the intermittency of the wind and for an efficient gas fired plant) 2.146 million cubic feet of natural gas each and every year;
	•	This is the equivalent of 370,000 barrels of oil;
	•	Each 75 MW solar project will prevent the release of approximately 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 900 tons of sulfur dioxide and over 200 tons of nitrogen oxide annually (based on the PJM Regional Average Disclosure Label for 2003);
	•	Each 100 MW of renewable power saves the expense of $30 million in natural gas in the case of wind; or $20 million in the case of a solar project.