I was going to make a “Rain in Spain Falls mainly on the Plains” joke, but I couldn’t quite make it work. As it stands, those plains are now probably dotted with giant windmills.
A first for Spain, and for any country, as most of their power over 2013 was generated by wind. Unseating Nuclear, Spain generated 20.9% of their electricity using wind farms. Quite an accomplishment. Even more exciting knowing that renewable energy, including tidal generators and solar, made up almost 45% of Spain’s power, taking pressure off of Nuclear and Coal fire plants.
Definitely something worth examining here stateside, as distributing our energy policy could stand to make local communities a lot of money while being better for the environment. We’re still toying with solar in the southwest, but recently Texas has been on a wind kick, and throughout the MidWest wind is starting to rival the cost effectiveness of coal even though it lacks the subsidies.
Red Eléctrica de España has a pretty cool site tracking daily energy usage, and how much of that demand is being met by renewables.
