NREL says 80% of US electricity can be renewable by 2050 with current technology

[kristopher]

8. It's worth looking at when you get the time

On an hourly basis across an entire year (8760 hours) they looked at electricity demand in all regions of the US and compared it to available renewable resources with a target of seeing if those resources could provide 80% of the required electricity - the remaining 20% was residual fossil/nuclear from today's grid.

It is stating the obvious to most of us, but the key finding was confirmation that indeed, renewables are "more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country".

The key term is "more than adequate" since we know that several of these resources are of sufficient quantity unto themselves to provide 100% of our power many times over.