December 27th, 2020 by Zachary Shahan
In the first 10 months of 2020, renewable energy sources accounted for 20.4% of United States electricity generation. That’s up from 17.5% in the same time period in 2018.
Wind power got up to 8% of the electricity pie, up from 6.4% in January–October 2018. Solar power was up to 3.4% in 2020 in January–October 2020, compared to 2.3% in January–October 2018. Other renewable resources were more or less steady in that timeframe.
As renewable energy sources grew in prominence, so did natural gas, which went from 35.3% of US electricity generation to 40.6%, an even bigger climb than the growth in electricity from renewable energy.
In fact, what took me by surprise was that even nuclear power grew its share of the market a bit, from 18.9% to 19.3%.
The major drop in share came from coal. Coal power declined from 27% of the electricity generation market in 2018 to 23.3% in January–October 2019 and then to 18.6% in January–October 2018.
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About the Author
Zachary Shahan is tryin’ to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao.
Zach has long-term investments in NIO [NIO], Tesla [TSLA], and Xpeng [XPEV]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.