Last year, there were 38 days when U.S. utilities got more electricity from hydroelectric, wind and solar generation than from coal, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. So far this year, according to the IEEFA and my own crunching of U.S. Energy Information Administration data, it’s already 122 — including every day in the month of April and all but three in May.
In the summer months, higher electricity demand and decreased production from wind turbines and dams give coal a seasonal boost, but expect renewables to start out-generating it again in the fall. EIA is now projecting that renewables will produce more electricity than coal for 2020 as a whole — a milestone that as recently as last year it didn’t anticipate coming until 2031. Here’s how things looked through May, the most recent month for which full data are available.
Some other countries are of course much further along in this transition. In Britain, coal has gone from the top electricity source as recently as six years ago to effectively irrelevant. In the European Union, renewables (including biofuels) generated more electricity than all fossil fuels in the first six months of this year.
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