Las Vegas city’s municipal power is now entirely renewable

Last week, Boulder Solar 1—a massive solar array in the southeast corner of Nevada—went online.

Adding geothermal plants, a mix of solar panels throughout the city—and hydroelectric turbines including the Hoover Dam—the Las Vegas city’s municipal power is now entirely renewable.

The city is now able to purchase enough carbon-free electricity to power its 140 buildings, street lights, and other facilities. This makes a ten-year effort finally pay off.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that this decade-long project plus energy efficiency savings, are estimated to save the city roughly $5 million per year.

The project that started back in 2008 will help the city decrease its consumption by 30%.

Las Vegas is the largest city in the United States to achieve this goal—which is now an inspiration and sets a standard for more cities to transition to sustainable energy.

Footnote: So this happened over the weekend.

Popular Mechanics, an online news platform broke a story with a misleading title which meant that the city of Las Vegas was 100 percent powered by renewables. Many other news websites immediately picked it up and published different versions of the story.

Forbes online published its own version of the story with a remark that the Popular Mechanics original story was misleading, adding that it was, in fact, the municipality of Las Vegas that now draws 100 percent power from renewables and not the entire city going renewable. Popular Mechanics has since corrected the error, but this tells you something.

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