Sun Day, and Renewable Energy Facts

Stanford's expert on renewable energy, Mark Jacobson, had a series of posts yesterday on BlueSky about the benefits of water, wind, and solar:

Just a reminder: 10 of the 11 states with the most Wind Water Solar as a percent of electricity demand have electricity prices 2 cents per kWh or more below the U.S. average. Wind is the greatest electricity source in 7 of those 11 states.

And another reminder that a transition of the U.S. to 100% Wind Water Solar across all energy sectors reduces private annual energy costs to Americans by 63% (giving an energy-cost payback time of less than 6 years) and total social energy costs by 86% (payback time less than 1 year):



And a 3rd reminder that a transition to 100% Wind Water Solar across the US reduces land use due to energy from 2.4% of US land (1.16% occupied by the fossil-fuel industry and 1.24% occupied by the corn-ethanol industry) to ~0.85% of U.S. land, with most of this being open space between wind turbines:



And a 4th reminder that a transition to 100% Wind Water Solar reduces the annual total tonnes of mining in the world by greater than 84%, despite the need for precious metals, which are a trivial component of total mining tonnage:

All that for today, which was Sun Day — an event organized by Third Act, Bill McKibben's relatively new group for elders committed to climate action, in coordination with just about every other climate organization in the U.S.

The Minneapolis Sun Day event was at the new Graco Park along the Mississippi River. Here are some photos, since we all need something positive to look at these days.

I got there an hour before it started because I got the time wrong, so people were still setting up:

I liked a lot of shirts I saw, including the back of this shirt:

A woman at one of the tables had a pair of warming stripes sneakers. I discussed with her and her fellow tablers how it seems so many people are not familiar with the stripes:

There were a lot of nice hand-painted or hand-crafted signs. The latter two of these were at the Indivisible table:

After the official start, there quite a lot of people there. Music, dance, plus educational sessions on legislation in Minnesota and how to electrify your home and still take advantage of the tax credits available from the Biden administration.

This is the Third Act table:

And a couple of the other tables with people ready to talk solar and climate in general:

Great event, and I hope they do it again.