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| The
coal-fired John E.
Amos Power Plant in
West Virginia. Credit:
Joseph Sohm/Visions of
America via Getty
Images |
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Coal
and utility-scale
solar power each
gained market share in
the first half of this
year, newly released
data on U.S.
electricity generation
show.
Natural gas, while
still the market
leader, lost some
share.
So what’s going on?
The increase for coal
and decrease for gas
can be largely
attributed to the
prices of each fuel,
according to analysts.
The rising cost of
natural gas has made
coal the more
affordable option for
some power plant
owners.
Meanwhile, the Trump
administration’s
efforts to prevent the
closure of old coal
plants were too recent
to have much of an
effect on national
data.
The gains for
utility-scale solar
were predictable,
considering the large
number of solar
projects that are
coming online.
From January to June
of this year, U.S.
power plants generated
2.1 million
gigawatt-hours of
utility-scale
resources,
representing a 2.9
percent increase from
the same period in
2024, according to the
Energy Information
Administration. Here
is the mix of
resources behind the
total:
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The
big movers were
natural gas, which
lost 2.7 percentage
points of market
share, and coal, which
gained 2 percentage
points.
Renewables gained 1.5
percentage points,
which was almost
entirely attributable
to utility-scale
solar. Wind and
hydropower, the other
leading sources of
renewable energy, were
essentially flat.
The main driver of
coal’s increase and
gas’ decrease is that
the U.S. benchmark
price of natural gas
was up substantially
in the first half of
the year compared to
the first half of last
year, said Michael
Goggin, vice president
of Grid Strategies, a
consulting firm.
“Plant owners are very
sensitive to those
price differences in
the fuels,” he said.
“If it’s a little bit
cheaper to run coal as
gas prices get higher,
then utilities and
other power plant
operators are going to
do that.”
Another important
factor is the
continuing increase in
U.S. electricity
demand from data
centers and other
large users, which was
met by an increase in
supply.
While an increase of
2.9 percent may not
seem like a lot, it’s
a pretty big shift
following two decades
in which there was
little change in net
generation, with
average annual growth
of less than 1
percent.
This projected period
of rapid growth for
the electric sector is
good for just about
anybody who owns a
power plant. Investors
are spending heavily
on natural gas power
plants, wind, solar
and batteries, based
on data for plants in
development.
But they’re not
building new
coal-fired plants. The
most recent large coal
plant to come online
was Sandy Creek Energy
Station in Texas in
2013, with summer
capacity of 932.6
megawatts. The most
recent coal plant of
any size was a
17-megawatt system
that went online in
2020 at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks.
Even with the support
of the Trump
administration, the
country’s coal plants
are mostly old and
expensive to operate.
“There’s an inexorable
long-term trend that
gas and renewables are
replacing coal
generation,” Goggin
said.
This recent increase
in coal power’s market
share is not a sign of
a bright future for
the technology, said
Brendan Pierpont,
director of
electricity modeling
for the think tank
Energy Innovation.
“Short-run
fluctuations aren’t
stopping the long-run
decline,” he said,
pointing to several
factors, including the
fact that plants
become more expensive
to operate as they
age.
In the meantime, it is
interesting to see
where coal had the
greatest gains this
year. Indiana and
Michigan are among the
states that stand out
for having large
increases in
coal-fired power.
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Michigan
is home to the J.H.
Campbell plant, which
was scheduled to close
in May but is staying
open because of a
Trump administration
order that says the
plant is needed to
maintain grid
reliability. Michigan
utilities were already
increasing their use
of coal power due to
market forces such as
gas prices, even
before the
administration’s
order.
The order had minimal
effect on this batch
of data, since the
plant was only
operating in one
month, June, when it
otherwise would have
been closed.
Goggin analyzed this
order in a report sponsored by environmental advocacy
groups. He found that
if the administration
uses emergency
declarations to stop
coal plants from
closing over the
remainder of President
Donald Trump’s term,
the positive effects
on reliability would
be minimal and the
costs to consumers
would increase by $3.1
billion to $5.9
billion per year.
Utility-scale solar is
rising almost
everywhere in the
United States.
California has long
been the leader in
generation from
utility-scale solar,
but Texas has now
moved into a virtual
tie, with California
ahead by less than 0.1
percent. Texas is on a
pace to become the
leader, and it may
clearly have that
status within a month
or two.
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Ohio,
Illinois and Indiana
stand out for having
doubled their
electricity generation
from utility-scale
solar generation in
the first half of this
year compared to the
first half of last
year. Those states now
rank ninth, 10th and
11th, respectively, in
the United States for
generation from
utility-scale solar.
While I’m focusing on
utility-scale solar,
small-scale solar has
also grown. The Energy
Information
Administration defines
small-scale solar as
any project with
capacity of 1 megawatt
or less, which mainly
includes rooftop
systems owned by
consumers. These
systems generated
47,025 gigawatt-hours
in the first half of
the year, which, for
perspective, was about
one-third of the
generation from
utility-scale solar.
It can be challenging
to talk about
small-scale solar in
the context of
national totals
because these small
projects are not
utility-scale
resources, so they
don’t have a slice of
the donut in the first
graphic above.
But rooftop solar and
other customer-owned
resources are
important for the way
they reduce demand for
power plants on the
grid. Each
kilowatt-hour a
customer generates for
themselves is one that
a centralized power
plant doesn’t need to
produce.
When asked for
big-picture
observations about
this data, Pierpont
noted that the market
share for fossil fuels
is on a long-term
downward trend that
has continued this
year. That share was
55.9 percent in the
first half of this
year (including coal,
gas and fuels with
tiny shares, such as
petroleum liquids),
down 0.6 of a
percentage point from
the first half of last
year.
Much of the movement
in the last six months
was driven by coal
trading market share
with natural gas, but
the long-term trend is
the rise of renewables
and the decline of
fossil fuels, he
said.
“Looking forward,
solar is a big share
of the projects
expected to be built
in the remainder of
this year and next
year, and over the
long run it will
continue to be a low
cost way of meeting
growing demand that
helps protect
customers from the
volatility in coal and
gas costs—so I expect
it to continue to eat
into market share from
coal and gas,” he
said.
I’ll add a caveat: The
Trump administration
could succeed, at
least in the short
term, in slowing this
long-term trend. But
that’s more of a blip
than a fundamental
change in direction.
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Other
stories about the
energy transition to
take note of this
week:
White House
Launches
Multi-Pronged Attack
on Offshore Wind: The
Trump administration
has instructed six
agencies to develop
plans to stifle
development of
offshore wind energy,
as Maxine Joselow, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer
report for The New
York Times. This
highly unusual effort
is being led by Susie
Wiles, the White House
chief of staff, and
Steve Miller, the
deputy chief of staff.
It includes
investigations into
potential negative
effects of offshore
wind on human health
and national defense,
and is the latest in a
series of actions
opposing this
renewable energy
technology.
Trump-Voting
Fishermen Are
Outraged at
Revolution Wind
Halt: The
Trump administration’s
order to stop
construction on
Revolution Wind off
the coast of Rhode
Island is earning a
rebuke from fishermen
who voted for Trump
and now are working in
collaboration with the
offshore wind
developer, as Clare Fieseler reports for Canary Media. The
fishermen are some of
the hundreds of
workers who were laid
off with the halt of
the project, which was
80 percent complete.
Trump’s EV
Charging Plan
Focuses on Gas
Stations: The
National Electric
Vehicle Infrastructure
program is going to
get back to paying for
charging stations
again, following a
legal battle in which
the Trump
administration was
unsuccessful in its
attempt to defund the
initiative. But the
program will shift its
priorities a bit,
emphasizing charging
stations at gas
stations and truck
stops where the owner
of the charging
station would also own
the land, as opposed
to shopping center
parking lots, as David Ferris reports for E&E News. Tesla
and Rivian have said
they dislike these
rules because those
companies tend to
build in places where
they don’t own the
land.
A Gigantic
Solar Park Gets Even
Larger: A
solar development in
the United Arab
Emirates, already
described by its owner
as the largest in the
world, is about to get
an additional 1
gigawatt of capacity,
as Patrick Jowett reports for PV Magazine.
Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum Solar Park
already has 3.8
gigawatts of capacity.
This new expansion,
plus previously
announced additions,
would bring the total
to 7.2 gigawatts. I
should note that it’s
a moving target for
any project to claim
to be the largest in
the world, and some of
this designation
depends on whether
we’re talking about a
single-site project or
one that spans
multiple sites. But
this project is
gigantic by any
standard, and much
larger than anything
in the United States,
where the largest
solar developments are
in the range of 1
gigawatt.
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