Persuasive Essay On Clean Power

With the United States being the second largest contributor of burning fossil fuels in the world, a new source of energy is overdue. About 86% of the country’s types of energy sources originate from fossil fuel consumption and other closely linked greenhouse gases. Some of these emissions include carbon dioxide, methane and other harmful gases. Without an alternate source of energy the atmosphere will continue to trap higher amounts of toxic gases and eventually won’t be capable of providing enough oxygen for us to breathe. The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has begun to produce new guidelines that will help reduce carbon pollution from electric generating facilities. One of their main plans to do this is through their Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power aims to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) from fossil fuel powered plants, smog and soot by 25 percent, and the United States largest source of carbon by 30 percent from …show more content…
On average for the United States and around the world, each widespread transition from one dominant fuel to another one takes 50 to 60 years. First, it was from wood to coal, then from coal to oil. This will be the third major energy transition for the U.S. from oil and coal to natural gas. From 2001 to 2012 the U.S’s coal consumption fell by 20 percent, oil declined by 7 percent and natural gas consumption increased by 14 percent. However, it will still be another decade or two before natural gas completely replaces coal consumption, which currently generates more than a third of America’s electricity. A transition to renewable energy can be difficult for numerous reasons. First we can simple evaluate the scale. The global use of fossil energies were about 1x10^18 joules in 2012, that’s 20 times greater than it was in the 1890s, as coal overtook wood. Generating this much energy with any new source is intimidating, and a significant amount of it will derive from the United