Chart: Almost all new US power plants are carbon-free
The U.S. is pretty much only building clean energy these days, and mostly solar and batteries. That’s good news — but the pace still needs to pick up.
By Dan McCarthy
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Zero-carbon energy is just about the only form of energy the U.S. is building anymore.
In the first half of this year, developers and power plant owners built 20.2 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a 21 percent increase from the first half of last year.
The overwhelming majority — 97 percent — of the new capacity added this year came from carbon-free solar, battery storage, wind, and nuclear projects.
Solar led the way, making up 59 percent of new installations through the end of June. Developers built 12 gigawatts’ worth of solar projects in the first half, including the enormous Gemini solar-and-storage facility in Nevada. Texas and Florida took the lead on solar during that period.
Battery storage was next, accounting for 21 percent of new capacity built in the first six months of the year. The 4.2 GW of grid batteries installed during the half-year period is equal to the amount the U.S. built in all of 2022. Most of the battery storage activity happened in California and — you guessed it — Texas.
Wind projects made up 12 percent of new additions during the same period. Nuclear power contributed another 5 percent of the new capacity additions, thanks to the completion of the 1.1 GW Vogtle 4 reactor in April. Just 400 megawatts of new fossil gas went online in the first six months of 2024.
If developers follow through with their construction plans for the second half of this year, the clean energy bonanza will only accelerate.
By the end of 2024, the country is expected to have installed a total of 37 GW of utility-scale solar and 15 GW of battery storage capacity, per EIA data — both around double the previous record-high installation figures for each technology.
That blistering growth forecast is a welcome development. Power sector emissions are not falling fast enough in the U.S., and in fact are currently forecast to tick up by 1 percent this year. The only way to solve that problem is to build staggering amounts of clean energy, swiftly.
A report earlier this year tried to quantify just how much new clean energy the U.S. had to build this year to get power sector emissions on track. The report’s conclusion? At least 60 GW. Right now, per EIA data, the country is on track to build exactly that much carbon-free power this year — 60 GW.
Dan McCarthy is news editor at Canary Media.
