Renewables Account For 18% Of US Electricity Generation
The United States Energy Information Administration has recently published data revealing that renewable energy sources provided nearly 18% of the country’s electrical generation through the first nine months of the year, while solar and wind grew substantially as compared to the same nine months a year ago.
Interestingly, this was a marginal increase on the 17.6% recorded through the first nine months of 2017, despite the fact that hydropower generation dropped by 5.1%.
Through the same period, EIA’s data shows that solar and wind both saw strong growth, with utility-scale solar growing by 30.3% (which includes distributed small-scale solar) and wind energy growing by 14.5% compared to the same period a year earlier. Taken together, wind and solar accounted for almost 9% of the country’s electrical generation and 49.7% of the total from all renewable energy sources.
Looking at all renewable energy technologies, hydropower remains the consistent leader, accounting for 7.05% of the nation’s total electricity generation, followed by wind with 6.41%, solar with 2.42%, biomass with 1.48% after a 1.5% increase in generation, and geothermal with 0.39% after a 5.4% increase.
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