Coal-Powered Energy Finally Overtaken by Wind and Solar in the US (electrek.co) 57
"Wind and solar energy generated more electricity in the U.S. than coal for the first time last year," reports the Wall Street Journal, "according to analysis from clean-energy think tank Ember.
"The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17% of the country's power mix while coal fell to a low of 15%, it said." Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, according to Ember's analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, increasing 27% from the year before, while wind rose 7%... Natural gas generation increased 3.3% in 2024, according to Ember, and remains by far the largest source of electricity in the U.S., accounting for 43% of the mix...
California and Nevada both surpassed 30% annual share of solar in their electricity mix for the first time last year (32% and 30%, respectively). California's battery growth was key to its solar success. It installed 20% more battery capacity than it did solar capacity, which helped it transfer a significant share of its daytime solar to the evening. Texas installed more solar and battery capacity than even California.
Yet the growth of solar was uneven — 28 states generated less than 5% of their electricity from solar in 2024, highlighting significant untapped potential — even before adding battery storage.
The article includes this observation from Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember. "The fall in battery costs is a gamechanger for how much solar the U.S. electricity grid could integrate in the near future."
Electrek notes that "After being stagnant for 14 years, electricity demand started rising in recent years and saw a 3% increase in 2024, marking the fifth-highest level of rise this century..." Natural gas grew three times more than the decline in coal, increasing power sector CO2 emissions slightly (0.7%). Coal fell by the second smallest amount since 2014, as gas and clean energy growth met rising electricity demand, whereas historically, they have replaced coal. Despite growing emissions, the carbon intensity of electricity continued to decline. The rise in power demand was much faster than the rise in power sector CO2 emissions, making each unit of electricity likely the cleanest it has ever been.
"The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17% of the country's power mix while coal fell to a low of 15%, it said." Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, according to Ember's analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, increasing 27% from the year before, while wind rose 7%... Natural gas generation increased 3.3% in 2024, according to Ember, and remains by far the largest source of electricity in the U.S., accounting for 43% of the mix...
California and Nevada both surpassed 30% annual share of solar in their electricity mix for the first time last year (32% and 30%, respectively). California's battery growth was key to its solar success. It installed 20% more battery capacity than it did solar capacity, which helped it transfer a significant share of its daytime solar to the evening. Texas installed more solar and battery capacity than even California.
Yet the growth of solar was uneven — 28 states generated less than 5% of their electricity from solar in 2024, highlighting significant untapped potential — even before adding battery storage.
The article includes this observation from Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember. "The fall in battery costs is a gamechanger for how much solar the U.S. electricity grid could integrate in the near future."
Electrek notes that "After being stagnant for 14 years, electricity demand started rising in recent years and saw a 3% increase in 2024, marking the fifth-highest level of rise this century..." Natural gas grew three times more than the decline in coal, increasing power sector CO2 emissions slightly (0.7%). Coal fell by the second smallest amount since 2014, as gas and clean energy growth met rising electricity demand, whereas historically, they have replaced coal. Despite growing emissions, the carbon intensity of electricity continued to decline. The rise in power demand was much faster than the rise in power sector CO2 emissions, making each unit of electricity likely the cleanest it has ever been.
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No politician lives forever. Even Trump can't (permanently) stop the decline in prices for wind and solar, and even Trump can't prop up the economics of coal forever. Despite his best efforts in his first term, coal declined and green energy made gains. The economic reality is too much for a skeptical President and party to overcome.
Re: Don't worry (Score:2)
Re:Only one issue still remains... (Score:5, Informative)
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...So this would at the very worst case scenario an increase of 1% to total waste. Since we assumed that no part of the turbine could be recycled or reused, and we assumed a very short lifespan for turbines, the true numbers are likely not remotely this high.
Even so, I'd say this is a situation where size matters. Turbine blades are huge, and probably don't stack very densely. Also, IIRC they're made of carbon-fiber, which is apparently the new asbestos [newcivilengineer.com]. So we probably don't want to be cutting or breaking them into smaller pieces - at least not unless it's done under tightly controlled conditions.
De-commissioned wind turbines may end up being more of a problem than we're ready for.
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How much mass goes into wind power versus alternatives like nuclear fission? I have an idea from a chart produced by the US Department of Energy and seen on this web page with figure 2: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
I have no problems with onshore wind power as it appears to be low cost, quite safe, low in CO2 emissions, and more. I live in "tornado alley" which has since been renamed as the "wind corridor" by renewable energy advocates. There is a lot of wind energy produced here. As much as I like
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Yes, getting clean 2.2GWe from the new Votgle reactors and another GWe or so from Hinkley is nice, but we're so breathtakingly bad at this now that it took a combined investment of $50B and 15 years to cough up about 3.5GW of capacity. That's irrelevant when utility-scale solar is now under $1B/GW.
The place for nuclear power, going forward, is a fleet of molten salt react
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done under tightly controlled conditions.
This is a really easy problem to solve with automation. Feed them into one end of a large shredder, with the output into a sealed building with adequate filtration. Once you've accumulated x-amount compress it into a brick and bury. Wood chippers and car crushers are ancient tech, and air filtration is even older.
I suspect you're just looking for excuses to not install something that you think is ugly, and your virtue signalling is just for show.
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I suspect you're just looking for excuses to not install something that you think is ugly, and your virtue signalling is just for show.
Nope, not even close. I'm just very aware of how frequently humankind has been bitten in the ass by some of the unintended consequences of its technological advances. I also considered our history of covering our eyes with our hands and saying "what consequences?".
Re:Only one issue still remains... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, it would be possible, surely, to simply put the wind turbine in a furnace that vaporized it at thousands of degrees C and just put the whole thing into the air as gas.
Because that's what the competition does, every day, with their fuel. So that's really a fair comparison.
It took some time to find the numbers and do conversions. At 7000 cf/MWh, a gas plant burns through 165 kg of methane for each MWh, so 827 kg/hour to displace a 5 MW wind turbine. About 20 tonnes of natural gas per day.
Every ten days, the natural gas plant burns the weight of that wind turbine and tosses the waste into the atmosphere.
I've been over the numbers twice, and I'm still shocked. Can this be right?
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I've re-checked a few times now, and it's 3500 cf per MWh of heat, which means 7000 cf per MWh of *electricity* from a combined-cycle gas turbine that's 50% efficient.
But, of course, the 200T mass of the wind turbine is silly. It forgets the heavy concrete foundation, but I'm good with that as I bet the foundations last a century, like most concrete foundations, and you can wear out 5+ turbines planted in it. (I think that's why nobody mentions the concrete.)
Most of the mass is steel, and that's 95% recy
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I hate it when people cite YouTube as a source, as if it is somehow authoritative.
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Good catch, there's no way I was going to watch the video either! Too much time wasted, you can't scan through a video.
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I hate it when people cite YouTube as a source, as if it is somehow authoritative.
I hate it when people dismiss YouTube videos as a source when all they are doing is taking a highly technical source and boiling it down to something the average person can comprehend.
If a YouTube video is taking a paper from some government agency or university and presenting the pertinent information in a way that most people can comprehend then that's providing a service to the community. That doesn't make the information irrelevant just because it is now in a video, the information still resides in the
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If a YouTube video summarizes the information in a government or university source, then proper attribution would involve citing the original source, not the summary as provided on YouTube.
There is no academic or scientific or research discipline in which YouTube videos are considered acceptable sources. It's not just my personal "disdain."
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Re:Only one issue still remains... (Score:5, Insightful)
> that needs to be addressed before we continue to deploy this technology
Nobody seems to give a shit about the environmental issues with coal, which are objectively worse in every way, so why start now?
Perfect is the enemy of better.
Also, did you actually watch the video that you linked? 1:50 "All that is to say; the problem is overstated, and it's overblown." She then spends the rest of the video explaining the problem (including how the reason they're hard to recycle is because they're built to last) and how it's being addressed. Not the damning indictment of wind power you seem to hope it is.
=Smidge=
Re:Only one issue still remains... (Score:4, Insightful)
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A solar panel is mostly glass, aluminium and sand. Just stockpile and eventually machines to delaminate them will be affordable. Same with turbines. The solutions are trivial, they just require scale to be economical. Yards of turbine blades and bases is a good thing, once a mobile grinder gets build you can cart it around the country and chop it all up. Problem solved.
Great but (Score:2, Insightful)
Energy prices keep going up. We were told these renewable sources would be cheaper by now.
Re:Great but (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy prices keep going up. We were told these renewable sources would be cheaper by now.
They do lower energy prices for the simple reason that the cost of mining wind and sunlight remains rock steady at $0.0 per MWh. However, transmission and distribution costs have increased because operators have dragged their hells on grid upgrades and expansions, fossil fuel energy sources like natural gas are still in the mix meaning that whenever somebody in the Middle East celebrates a wedding by emptying an AK-47 mag into the air the cost of fossil fuels rockets up, Putin's little history revision project in Ukraine isn't helping either and finally, all kinds of energy hungry industries like data/computing centres for AI and bitcoin mining drive up prices. The world is not as simple as Mr. Trump makes you think it is.
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Do you have examples of increased reliance on wind and solar power resulting in lowered energy costs? Or rather I'd like to see two examples since any one example could be an outlier.
I can see onshore wind as lowering average electricity prices for a nation because of it being so low cost, solar and offshore wind appear to only raise electricity costs. There's been studies on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you want to see lower CO2 emissions and lower energy costs then the solution appears clea
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operators have dragged their [heels] on grid upgrades and expansions
Batteries (backup sources) aren't the operators responsibility. They are the responsibility of the producers. To ensure contractual delivery responsibility.
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They are cheaper, but the grid operators who have substantial investments in fossil fuels and nuclear are going to make sure they get paid first.
You can bypass them by installing your own solar. It will pay back in a few years and then it's all profit. Near zero cost electricity over lifetime.
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You can bypass them by installing your own solar. It will pay back in a few years and then it's all profit. Near zero cost electricity over lifetime.
If that were true then I'd not be getting phone calls about how I can cash in on government subsidies on rooftop solar panels. Instead they'd be selling me on how I can save money on not needing grid power because I could produce all the electricity I needed from the sunlight that hits my roof.
Rooftop solar only works so long as governments subsidize it. Once the subsidies end then rooftop solar would only be viable for those that are too remote to be on some electrical grid. If you want to prove me wron
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You don't seem to understand how grids run. System operators call up suppliers and schedule them to produce certain amounts at certain times. If you can't do that (by having backup sources) you get bumped off the phone list. Traditional suppliers know how to work within this system.
Nobody wants a supplier who calls and says "Now I have some power to sell. Whoops. A cloud just went overhead."
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Do they?
https://www.usinflationcalcula... [usinflatio...ulator.com]
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Natural gas turbines spin up/down faster though and can be retrofit for hydrogen.
The non nuclear net zero transition is first PV to save on natural gas, then a transition to hydrogen from natural gas. Expensive, but doable.
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The non nuclear net zero transition is first PV to save on natural gas, then a transition to hydrogen from natural gas. Expensive, but doable.
Where does this hydrogen come from?
I've seen mention of "white hydrogen" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) as an energy source but this appears to be quite rare. Most hydrogen comes from natural gas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) which isn't exactly reducing CO2 emissions since there's added steps between the natural gas and electricity production where losses in efficiency can be found.
I believe there will be no real reduction in CO2 emissions without nuclear fission as an energy source. There
why is everyone ignoring natural gas? (Score:2)
I read this
and thought "wait, 15+17 isn't even a THIRD of 100%, where's the rest of it?"
LNG makes up a huge chunk of the rest of that 100% of course. We still have a really long way to go before get hydrocarbons down to even 50% of what we use.
It's a finite resource taken from the ground just as coal or oil is. I don't understand how natural gas (usually "liquefied natural gas" or LNG) is flying
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Natural gas is a compromise.
It is better (environmentally) than burning coal/oil, but more harmful than wind/solar.
It is a waste product in the process of pumping petroleum (when we drill for petroleum, natural gas bubbles up and has to be dealt with).
It is less harmful (environmentally) to burn it than to release it unburnt into the atmosphere.
So we use it.
Impose tarrifs on "renewable energy". (Score:4, Funny)
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More like there's already a tariff on Chinese solar panels and polysilicon.
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As I recall the Trump administration is continuing a policy from the Biden adminstation of tripling the USA nuclear power capacity by 2050. That would mean lowering CO2 emissions and lowering energy costs for Americans for the foreseeable future.
Getting energy cost lowered long term might require rising tariffs on energy in the short term. Plenty of solar power production in the USA relies on cheap PV panels from China. Can the USA expect China to continue selling PV panels at low cost to the USA? I dou
I wonder (Score:2)
I wonder what the number would be if the incremental energy required to install those renewables were deducted from the amount generated.