Wind and solar together overtake coal for first time in US

Wind and solar together produced a record 17% of US electricity last year, overtaking coal for the first time, a new Ember review found.

Solar consolidated its status as the country’s fastest-growing energy source, accounting for 81% of all new annual capacity additions. Wind, by contrast, is lagging behind — only 5.1 gigawatts were installed in 2024, the least new capacity in a decade — meaning it’s a two-horse race between solar and gas to meet the country’s electricity demand, now firmly rising after nearly 14 years of stagnation.

Solar appears to be winning, but the map is uneven: Major battery projects saw California and Nevada generate more than 30% of electricity from solar, significantly higher than the national average. North Dakota, for example, generated just 0.01% of its electricity from solar, with 27 other states also getting less than 5% of their electricity from solar.

Still, “California [and] Nevada are showing how quickly that could increase, if other states were really keen to step up,” said Dave Jones, Global Insights Programme Director at Ember and a co-author of the report.

The intrigue? Virginia, home to more than 500 AI data centers, witnessed the biggest year-on-year rise in gas generation out of any US state. “There’s a definite positive vibe that [fueling data centers] could and should be done with clean electricity, but that’s not necessarily how this is going to pan out,” Jones told Semafor.

But no additional gas capacity came online last year, and the industry is facing problems. The CEO of the US’ second largest gas producer EQT recently blamed rising consumer costs over the last four years on bottlenecks caused by a lack of available pipeline space following a series of project cancellations.