Last week, I published an update on US power capacity — new additions as well as total power capacity. The good news was that 100% of new capacity power in October was from renewable sources. The less good news was that only 21.7% of total power capacity is from wind, water, and solar power plants (only counting large-scale solar, not small-scale rooftop solar).
With another month logged and put on the record books, we have another month in which only power from renewable energy sources was added to the US electricity grid — 100% of new power capacity was from renewables.
In the first 3 quarters of 2020, while renewable energy accounted for 70% of new power capacity in the country, it still accounted for just 20.4% of total electricity generation in those 9 months.
Electricity from coal power plants has declined from 26.9% of US electricity generation in the first 7 months of 2018 to 17.7% of US electricity in the first 7 months of 2020. Furthermore, that’s down from 33% in 2015, 39% in 2014, 45% in 2010, and 50% in 2005.
Following up on our report on US power capacity additions in the first half of 2020, this article covers electricity generation in the first half of 2020. It splits out electricity generation by source. It also compares those numbers to the same electricity generation split in the first half of 2019 and in the first half of 2018.
“Small-scale solar photovoltaics (e.g., rooftop solar systems) alone grew by 19.22% YTD. Compared to all other energy sources, solar-generated electricity has enjoyed the fastest growth rate thus far in 2019.” Natural gas generation grew by 6.71%, nuclear energy generation grew by 0.8%, and coal-generated electricity generation declined by 14.46%.
The United States’ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has apparently “dramatically revised” its three-year forecast for changes in the country’s electrical generating capacity mix, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, with sharp declines expected for fossil fuel and nuclear generation offset by even stronger growth in renewable energy.
The first numbers on last year’s energy trends are in and there are two pieces of great news and one that should worry us: Solar and wind energy are thriving, coal-fired generation sunk to a four-decade low — but natural gas infrastructure is expanding.
The latest energy and electricity forecasts from the US government has predicted that wind energy will outperform hydropower for the first time, providing a greater share of the country’s electricity mix in 2019.
To complement our revival of US electricity capacity reports, here’s a new report on US electricity generation.
As with the capacity report, things are not looking too bright. There’s still a lot of grey — in the bar charts below, in the skies near fossil fuel power plants, and in the human and planetary outlook based on how slowly we are cutting fossil fuel electricity generation.
