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Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoOil next.
- NooneAtAll3 4mo agoUSA became top 1 oil exporter, so we'll see how that goes
- zimmund 4mo agothey'll run out of countries to invade (or to sell oil to) at some point, so green alternatives will -eventually- prevail...
- sourcegrift 4mo ago[flagged]
- DFHippie 4mo agoYour comment reminded me of this classic: https://youtu.be/EYMjvXdrZIw?si=rYpJm3SP2kcAWPs_ https://youtu.be/EYMjvXdrZIw?si=rYpJm3SP2kcAWPs_
- SoftTalker 4mo agoThis is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output shrinking, solar output rising, the lines have crossed. Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoThe world is, roughly, deploying 1TW/solar PV a year at current rates. It took a while to get here, it won’t take as long to get to 100%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
- SoftTalker 4mo agoStorage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.
- pstuart 4mo agoTrue, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.
- idontwantthis 4mo agoGrid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Retric 4mo agoNot quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then. So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.
- Paradigma11 4mo agoGreat, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.
- YtMtBt 4mo ago[flagged]
- warkdarrior 4mo agoCoal-powered AI has fewer hallucinations.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48477729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48477729
- leonidasrup 4mo agoIn other news: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states In 2025 US produced from solar 388.82 TWh, from gas 1,807.34 TWh. So solar has long way to grow to replace gas in US electricity production.
- epistasis 4mo agoThat shift is going to happen a lot quicker than people expect, here's the expected 2026 US grid additions: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 - Solar: +87 TWh/year (assuming 23% capacity factor, lower end of US range) - Gas: +9TWh/year (6.3GW new, 4.6GW retirements, higher end of US capacity factor of 60%) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206 This is in the face of massive growth for grid demand for the first time in decades, so the trend will accelerate. New gas turbine manufacturing capacity is tapped out, causing new gas CapEx to get more expensive: https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/gas-turbine-prices-soar-195-as-market-faces-supply-demand-crisis/ https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/gas-turbine-prices-so... Meanwhile solar and storage are continually plummeting in price. So the current trend of approximately all new generation being renewables is going to accelerate. And then it will start eating into older, existing generation assets, causing early retirements of existing gas generation capacity. Most investors think that any new gas generation built today will be a stranded asset long before its end of life. That doesn't matter to the hyperscalers, who run them so poorly and hard that the turbine shafts die in a few years and can afford it, but for regular utilities, buying any new gas generation is a boondoggle meant to soak the ratepayers and capture the guaranteed profit rate. And the numbers above ignore residential solar, which will further lessen demand for gas, and as the cost of transmission and distribution soar on the grid, residential solar becomes an always better deal, because it skips all that. The global cost-minimum for a future grid will have gas on it for maybe 20 more years, but not much after that. We'll switch to lots of storage and tons of over-capacity of solar and wind.
- daedrdev 4mo agoThe US has literally double its total electricity production in solar and batteries stuck in the now 5 year FIFO permit hell we require for grid additions that will cause most proposals to pull out before completion
- Aboutplants 4mo agoBatteries taking over gas peakers is the next milestone I’m looking forward to. We will need gas generation for base load for quite a while due to the pure infrastructure that exists. I do fear that natural gas may end up as a Nuclear scenario where in we do not wholly embrace natural gas Fuel Cells that produce electricity with no emissions. Yes you have the fracking issue but the US owns that environmental damage within its borders instead of outsourcing mineral extraction to poorer countries. We solve the biggest issue with fossil fuels (emissions) while working on limiting environmental impacts on extraction. It’s also way less noisy than gas turbines and can be scaled to basically any size. Bloom is the gold standard right now but I hope they get strong competition soon, I truly believe/hope that Natural Gas fuel cells are a massive piece to the future energy puzzle.
- margalabargala 4mo agoNot sure that will come to pass. With the drop in price of both solar and batteries being not only continuous but accelerating, we're quickly approaching a tipping point where it will become uneconomical to not replace anything grid-tied fossil-fuel with solar/wind+battery. Quickly being in the next decade or two.
- mNovak 4mo agoTo be clear, fuel cells are considered "low air pollution" because they eliminate certain nasty combustion products (NOx), but they still produce as much CO2 per kWh as a gas turbine. Arguably that CO2 stream is concentrated and a candidate for capture/sequestration, but no one is doing that in practice.
- harmmonica 4mo agoQuestion for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually becoming a reality? Is it primarily regulatory where government, utilities, installers would fight it tooth and nail to protect revenue and/or the grid? Is it a legit safety issue? I have to imagine safety could be easily addressed in terms of the power management between grid and solar (obviously these balcony units are relatively safe, but tiny in comparison). Installation perhaps has more safety issues (e.g., installing panels on a roof), but I just wonder if it's reasonable to think that a more robust plug and play option will become available or is even already available in certain places. And I feel the need to say this, but this is the type of question I'd immediately turn to an LLM to answer, and I probably will ultimately, but I "still" like getting peoples' on-the-ground experience/expertise.
- awjlogan 4mo agoRegulation aside, a significant issue is physical area. Most people won’t have access to enough area in the right direction to make it a primary source.
- trial3 4mo agoi think it’s kind of the opposite: balcony solar is good for power companies in the same way that them asking you to turn off your lights is good for power companies: if each customer is using less overall power they can serve more customers with existing infra. that obviously depends on time of use and the sun etc, but balcony solar in the USA can’t come fast enough. my electricity in NYC is almost $.40/kWh, a limited secondary source is still huge it makes a lot of sense to me as someone who has casually researched as a way to make the load of an A/C vanish from the perspective of my utility, but i can’t see regulations catching up nationwide soon. any real microinverters can detect the grid being down and shut off to prevent zapping people working on power lines, but the complexities of split-phase power (you can consume on one leg but backfeed on the other leg rather than consume what you generate, which is bad for billing etc) and risks of intra-circuit overload will all freak out americans. we put outlets absolutely everywhere because of how scared we are of extension cords, there’s an education and “am i going to start an electrical file” consumer sentiment obstacle to widespread adoption in the US
- xnx 4mo ago+1 to the Guardian for mentioning their data source, but -1 for not linking to it. +2 for EMBER for having a data source AND being able to link to the parameters that show solar overtaking coal for the month in the US. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?entity=United+States&mode=split&temporal_res=monthly&date=2026-05-01&date_from=2019-01-01 https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoFor people who are interested in this space should very much read EMBER. They make digestable, data rich reporting. The latest 2025 summary report[0] has some great information, some top-level call-outs - Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth. - For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%) - For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix... [0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...
- actionfromafar 4mo agoHave EMBER been vetted by the Ministry of Truth?
- csense 4mo agoThis is a great link. The most interesting feature of the solar graph is the amplitude of the seasonal variations. It looks like we typically generating ~100% more solar power in July than December. If "we need to store solar energy from summer to winter" is indeed a significant issue, maybe you could use the extra power in summertime to make natural gas [1] and then store the gas until you need it in the winter. [1] https://www.terraformindustries.com/ https://www.terraformindustries.com/ is a startup working on turning solar power into natural gas
- laurencerowe 4mo ago
- ck2 4mo agodon't worry this administration is giving nearly a billion dollar bailout to coal using war powers so congress can't block * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/04/trump-coal-defense-production-act https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/04/trump-coal-d...
- ourmandave 4mo agoThey could have used it to retrain coal workers or help them transition to some other job instead of a handout to plant and mine owners.
- marcosdumay 4mo agoBut then normal people would have more money, and centi-millionaires would have less. Apparently, both are against the US government's policy.
- ninalanyon 4mo agoThe centi prefix means one hundredth, as in centi-metre. So a centi-millionaire would have only 10 thousand :-) You mean a hecto-millionaire.
- marcosdumay 4mo agoCentipedes are having a bad day.
- dnautics 4mo agoThe US currently is at per capita GHG emissions approximately at the the same level as it was in 1910. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states Despite not being in the paris treaty, the us needs only a 10-12% reduction to meet the paris accord requirements on schedule (43% decrease by 2030).
- usefulcat 4mo agoYes, but it was most recently at the same level between 1939 and 1940, according to that graph. And total US GHG emissions are currently at about the same level as they were in 1988.
- jltsiren 4mo agoThe Paris Agreement deals with total emissions. Unlike previous climate treaties, it doesn't specify a baseline year. If you use 2005, as the US was supposed to use, the 2030 target is ~3.5 billion tonnes. 2024 emissions were ~4.9 billion tonnes. If you use a 1990 baseline, as in earlier treaties, the US target becomes ~2.9 billion tonnes.
- dnautics 4mo agoUS population has been basically stable (+10% over the past 10 years), so per capita (in terms of the paris agreement timeframe) is a reasonable proxy.
- thelastgallon 4mo agoUS consumers and businesses buy almost all their stuff from China. China's massive footprint of Coal should be added to US emissions.
- computerdork 4mo agoGood point. But one factor is China is also greatly reducing their emissions. For instance, their pollution levels have plummeted after enacting strict controls: https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/china-has-quickly-and-sharply-reduced-pollution-since-enacting-strict-policies/ https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/china-has-quickly-and-sha... Still, that is a good point, a lot of the emissions from manufacturing have been shifted to other countries.
- thelastgallon 4mo agoThis administration is hitting milestones without even trying!
- sebastiennight 4mo agoFunny, I initially read the OP title as > Solar generates more energy in US than coal for the last time Then the actual title is what confused me for a second.
- mbgerring 4mo agoNo, the clean energy industry is doing that, it’s a large and growing industry with billions of capital deployed and millions of people working hard across technology and policy to make it happen.
- hristov 4mo agoHehe, it is actually trying very hard not to hit the milestones.
- thewhitetulip 4mo agoThere was an article recently about how the West Asia war is quickly decarbonising South Asia. Lot of solar and wind projects in the pipeline for SA countries. Especially because now renewables are a national security issue
- nickserv 4mo agoYou mean the "US-Israel war of aggression against Iran"? Let's not avoid assigning responsibility when it is so clear.
- oblio 4mo ago> West Asia war Oh, snap, did Turkey attack Cyprus again? :-p What West Asian war? Isn't Iran firmly in the Middle East by any reasonable definition?
- cman1444 4mo agoThe middle east is in Asia, no?
- cardiffspaceman 4mo agoWest Asia is a less Eurocentric than “Orient” or “Middle East.” I like it.
- oblio 4mo agoLOL "Asia" is a Greek name, fully Eurocentric. The entire continent doesn't even make sense. Geographically, sure, culturally, absolutely not. It should either be Eurasia or probably about 5 different continents (South of Himalaya aka Indian subcontinent, North of Himalaya aka Siberia + Central Asia + China + South East Asia, South of Caucasus + Kopet Dag aka Middle East, etc).
- thewhitetulip 4mo agoBut the correct term is West Asia and not middle east (I live here and yet I didn't know it until this was shown as West Asia war on the news)
- Havoc 4mo agoSee that's why the cool kids are moving to clean coal /s
- Xotic007 4mo ago[dead]
- mbgerring 4mo agoI work in clean energy, and whenever I read comments like those in this thread I realize there’s so much that I take for granted that is still relatively unknown outside my bubble. It's somehow still early innings for the energy transition, and there are a lot of fun engineering problems to work on. Join us, start here: climatebase.org
- cardiffspaceman 4mo agoI told someone about UBI and they hadn’t heard of it, 4 or 5 years ago, despite being an executive at a charity that is supposed to help people with food money.
- Torkel 4mo agoThe growth of solar is astounding. I dug into data a while back and tried to do some visualizations of it, mainly for my own understanding: https://torkeldanielsson.se/solar-energy-forecasts/ https://torkeldanielsson.se/solar-energy-forecasts/ Solar is already by far our cheapest source of energy. As solar expands, the learning rate means solar will be even cheaper. We should expect solar to be the single largest source of energy on earth by 2035.
- boznz 4mo agoA shame electricity is not the whole picture when it comes to energy. The resurgence in EV sales off the back of high gas prices is awesome, but almost 100% of bulk transport costs still rely on oil. Also, unlike EV's which can be plugged in at home for most of their needs, bulk-transport will require considerable new infrastructure to make the transition. Still a way to go.
- Torkel 4mo agoIt's a couple of months since I did the calculations, but I do believe 2035 is for all energy, not just electricity. It's easy to drag out a flat line in an exponential graph - but the line better start bending soon or we'll end up with a truly mind boggling amount of solar energy.
- aussieguy1234 4mo agoThere was this launched some time ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds-largest-battery-electric-ship-hull096/105243498 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds... It'd an electric ship, which has what is basically a grid scale battery power plant on board to power it. The problem is range. Good enough for it's intended use as a ferry in South America. But it's going to need to be towed there from Tasmania.
- ZeroGravitas 4mo agoThere was a global agreement to shift ocean transport from oil. The US killed it. The US and Israel attacked Iran causing chaos in oil markets and put it back on track. https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-progresses-work-on-ship-emissions-pollution-and-ocean-protection.aspx https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-...
- shevy-java 4mo ago> Solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity in May even as Trump boosts coal over clean energy People at this point should realise that Trump is lying. He also does the same with regards to Iran. It is time to not only look at the Epstein connection, but also the corruption in that whole family dynasty. There has never been as much theft, I claim, as with that dynasty. (And Epstein plays a role because superrich partied with underage girls, and they told Trump to shut down all investigations. This is corruption in its final stage. Same here - Trump babbles about old energy but his superrich friends expand on renewables. And profit. As always.)
- complianceowll 4mo agoI like it.
- JoeAltmaier 4mo agoNote that coal is dropping precipitously, which increased the effect.
- h4kunamata 4mo agoEasy, the previosu government destroyed coal for solar, it is easy that way.