Harvard Study Shows Where Investments In Renewable Energy Can Be Most Effective
Sometimes, a study or report comes to such an obvious conclusion you wonder why the study needed to be done in the first place. Here’s an example. A new study from the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment — aka C-CHANGE — shows that the best way to maximize the benefits of renewable energy per dollars invested is to install wind and solar farms where most of the electricity comes from burning coal — such as India — rather than a place where clean energy is already the norm — such as California.
A wind farm in India may make it possible to shut down a coal generating station completely, which would lead to a significant decrease in carbon emissions and a big boost to public health in that area. On the other hand, building the same wind farm in California may make only a minute difference to the local community.
The C-CHANGE study was conducted by the Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. In regard to siting new renewable energy projects in the United States, it used a similar analysis to determine that it is a more efficient use of capital to build new clean energy facilities in the Midwest, which still relies heavily on coal for its electricity, than to build more renewable energy capacity in places like California, which already sources much of its
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