The developed nations of Europe and the UK have played into the hands of Russia by closing coal and nuclear generation facilities and becoming dependent on renewables and Russian natural gas, rather than developing their own natural gas reserves.

The economy will face additional challenges, beginning immediately but growing most rapidly in the period from 2035 to 2050 as all remaining fossil-fueled end uses are transitioned to electric end uses.

Germany, which has the European Union’s biggest economy, and other countries intend restarting mothballed coal-fired power plants and extending the life of their nuclear power plants to reduce their reliance on Russian gas and coal following its invasion of Ukraine.

Overall, the planned total capacity of the MBR solar park is 5 GW, to be reached by 2030.

U.S. electricity generation from renewable sources, such as hydropower, wind, and solar, accounted for 20% of electricity generation both in 2020 and in 2021.

The first project, with a capacity of 1 GW, may be supplemented later by a second plant of 1 GW, which could have either fixed foundations or floating wind turbines anchored to the ocean floor.

For the first five months of 2022, solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources provided 25.7% of U.S. electricity – more than either coal or nuclear power and up from 22.9% a year earlier.

The transition to a renewable plus storage grid would require replacement of baseload coal generation and perhaps nuclear generation as well.

Mainstream’s offshore business will continue to develop existing project opportunities for bottom-fixed and floating wind in markets such as Norway, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Ireland, the UK and the US, while exploring opportunities in new markets.

US Energy Information Administration reports a capacity factor of 25% for solar generation.