This page is U.S. Centric.

The United States is the largest consumer of energy in the world.  Russia is the most inefficient.  Concerns about climate change is rapidly changing the way the world produces energy.  Most the focus has been on electricity to date, but the use of oil is of equal if not greater concern  since the private industry controls policy almost exclusively.  As a result in the US policy shift to become more self sufficient, it has embarked on the development of Fracking Natural Gas and the mining of Shale oil.  These changes have resulted in a major drop in electric prices at present due to the drop in natural gas prices.

In addition only one coal powered facility has been able to go online in the last five years out of the 150 that had been planned.  Wind and Solar development have become the fastest growing energy sector in the US, but still have far to go, simply because of the long standing support of oil and other hard path (fossil fuel) sources, including nuclear power which has long gotten the lion’s share of federal energy subsidies  – $100 billion over last 60 years – (1999 REPP Study)

In addition, contrary to nearly all US Public Relations driven news commentary, nuclear energy is not CO2 free.  Note that there have been no honest or for that matter publicized studies ever done in the US that disclose the real CO2 releases, including those of nuclear energy, which according to European studies places nuclear energy being worse than any of the renewable energy strategies, and far worse the energy efficiency strategies that are contrary to US electric utility models that only call for further development, for their own bottom line.

The dramatic increase in the rapid development of wind energy in the US has spurred attempts by conservatives to kill its funding but have failed.  There are certainly areas of the country that its inappropriate, but it rapid expansion is now pushing up against the aging electric grid.