Increasing renewable energy may not reduce the use of fossil fuels in the United States, according to a study by Ryan Thombs, assistant professor of rural sociology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
Increasing renewable energy may not reduce the use of fossil fuels in the United States, according to a study by Ryan Thombs, assistant professor of rural sociology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
In the study, published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Thombs analyzed fuel production data spanning 1997 to 2020 from the 33 states that produce fossil fuels in the U.S., which is the second largest greenhouse gas emitter and second largest energy producer in the world.
He found no association between the production of renewable energy and fossil fuels, which suggests that creating renewable energy did not lower or replace the production of fossil fuels. However, Thombs did find that more than 96% of the variation in fossil fuel production across the states was explained by fixed factors in each state, such as fossil fuel endowments — the amount of fossil fuel deposits available in each state.
Thombs said the findings suggest that additional policies may be needed to help reduce the use of fossil fuels, since current renewable energy investment approaches often assume that more renewable energy naturally leads to less fossil fuel production.
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