Renewables continue to thrive

I was looking for one of my old posts about energy, and I stumbled across this one from 2020 where it was expected that all renewable energy sources combined out overtake coal for energy production in the US. That was a huge milestone and definitely something to be excited about, but I was curious how things have changed since then.

The good news is that they are smoking coal now, representing about 26% of all energy generation in the country compared to coal's 16%. The numbers get even more impressive if you include nuclear energy, which I personally would.

As always, I think context is important, so let's look at what the mix was 10 years ago in 2015.

Just ten years ago, the mix was incredibly different with sources such as solar contributing less than one-tenth of what they do today. And as a reminder, energy consumption hasn't stayed flat over those ten years. Estimates put U.S. consumption up about 5 to 6% from ten years ago. So not only are renewables increasing their slice of the pie, they're growing exponentially in terms of raw power generation.

Going back another ten years to 2005 reveals an even more different chart.

Cole truly was king, and it's pretty remarkable how much has changed since then. I'll have more on this in an upcoming post, but clearly the way forward is to advance renewables as quickly as possible, and I think both economic and environmental interests support this transition.