For the first time, fossil fuels accounted for less than half of U.S. electricity production across an entire month as clean power generation surged in March.
Last month, fossil gas and coal made up just over 49% of power generation, while solar, wind, hydropower, biofuels and other renewables, and nuclear met 51% of demand, new data from think tank Ember shows.
It’s worth noting that this happened at the start of the spring “shoulder season,” which runs from March to May in the U.S. and is a sort of stars-aligning time for clean energy performance.
There are a few reasons why. Milder temperatures mean people use less energy to heat and cool their homes, so power demand tends to contract. That has historically made shoulder seasons — the fall version runs from September to November — a good time to take fossil-fuel and nuclear power plants offline for maintenance. Meanwhile, wind production peaks in the spring, and solar production comes more alive with the longer days of stronger sun. Last month, solar and wind alone met over 24% of overall U.S. power demand.
But still: The shoulder seasons are always a stars-aligning time for clean energy. They were last year and the year before that and the one before that, too. Yet in the U.S., clean energy has never before beaten out fossil fuels for a whole month, no matter the season. That’s what makes this a significant moment.
It’s also notable given the current political hostility toward clean energy in the U.S. — and the federal government’s re-embrace of fossil fuels.
President Donald Trump wants to halt all wind turbine construction. Congressional Republicans are considering cutting Inflation Reduction Act tax credits that incentivize clean energy projects. Trump’s aggressive tariffs on China, which remain in place even after he paused “reciprocal” levies on every other country, could drastically slow the battery storage boom. And the president just this week signed a clutch of executive orders aimed at boosting coal, a highly polluting energy source that also happens to be in structural decline because it cannot compete with fossil gas or renewables on cost.
Even in spite of those headwinds, renewables continue to soar to new heights, underscoring the fact that clean energy is no longer a marginal part of the U.S. power system — but a cornerstone that is here to stay.
In other news, apples beat oranges. different energy sources have different characteristics. Coal and gas are dispatchable and have spinning inertia for grid stability.
Yes, different energy sources have different characteristics, and grid management software is getting more sophisticated at adapting to system failures. Professional engineers have to deal with all sorts of tradeoffs with any complex systems.
Here are the trade-offs I see among power generation:
– capital expense to design and build (CapEx)
– time to design and build
– cost of fuel (inc. transport of fuel)
– cost of maintenance
– water requirements
– space requirements
– expandability and/or ease of upgrade
– cost of insurance
– reliance on storage (includes solar, wind, nuclear)
– externalities (pollution, GHGs, damming of rivers)
– political vulnerability (reliance on foreign fuel or parts)
– vulnerability to more extreme weather
Modern wind and solar farms have power buffers (batteries) on their front ends.
Also, there are more technologies to maintain grid inertia today. Surprisingly to me, many were first introduced on the Texas grid (via ERCOT):
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/73856.pdf
Any way you slice it, transmission seems to be the Achilles’ heel of all of them, though. We’ll probably end up forking over more money for burying transmission lines.
The title of that PDF is “Inertia and the Power Grid: A Guide Without the Spin”. I’m not saying there’s no value in it, but I’d be very skeptical of the “National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)” not having some kind of spin. Just the name makes me suspect it’s filled with people with a wind and solar bias.
NREL is certainly filled with people biased toward both wind and solar, and other renewable energy sources, and strangely enough in this age of nihilistic fascism* biased against THE END OF CIVILIZATION AND NATURE! Thus the bias toward renewables and thus all the hundreds of excellent scientific studies that have been done there.
What an intransigent idiot you are.
* Reiterating rwg’s Monbiot article plus Naomi Klein’s “The rise of end times fascism” in today’s Guardian.
If you don’t like their pun, you could “do your own research” and search for
grid inertia(within the past few years, please, now that people have learned more).
Grid inertia was needed more in the past when the response time of the power plants on the grid would otherwise have taken too long to take over. Now that advanced inverter technology is provided by grid-scale batteries, it’s less of a problem.
One thing I worried about two decades ago was how fast the engineering schools could scale up the graduation numbers for expertise with digital v. analog power management. I realize now that’s not much of an issues now that the IEEE nerds are finding new life in addressing grid scale technology (as opposed to being stuck with the same stale tech for most of a century).
On the upside, onshore and offshore wind, solar PV, CSP, clothesline paradox solar, hydro, micro-hydro, geothermal, tidal, and other renewable energy sources……
DON’T CAUSE THE END OF CIVILIZATION AND NATURE!
But we’ll have cost-effective carbon capture from fossil fuel power plants annnny day now!
“Renewables Allow Us To Pay Less, Not Twice”
Skeptical Science, April 9, 2025
Right now, they’re “allowing” us to pay for more land, transmission, exotic materials and backup.
Nope. Another lie. In fact, 4 lies.
“Exotic” materials? What are you talking about? Trilithium from the Delta Quadrant? Renewables require LESS mining, and it declines even more over generations. Wind, solar, EVs, etc. require no rare earth metals, which in any case are quite common and used in many other ways.
Renewable energy is so efficient switching to 100% RE would reduce global energy use by half, so less of everything would be needed. Healing the Wetiko disease that causes all our problems would allow even more savings and we could outlaw crypto etc. which are just worse ways to create more inequality.
Sabin 33 #23. “How much land do wind turbines use?”
Skeptical Science
Combining rooftop solar (including commercial buildings like big stores, warehouses, and distribution centers) with offshore wind and geothermal heat/lithium extraction sites would DRASTICALLY reduce the land and transmission needed for energy. If we don’t do that it’s because corrupt right wing politicians and insane mbillionaires refuse.
And for chrissake read the article I’ve pointed out 3 times now.
All grids require backup and redundancy; renewables use LESS because they’re complementary and the fuel is free, so any “excess” is easily put to other, non time-sensitive uses, like desalination and electroshock treatment for far right psychopaths keeping us from preventing catastrophic climate change.
Two nits:
(1) Regarding 100% RE: Getting those last few percent of RE takeover of large grids (not wee Scotland) will be much, much slower and more difficult than the low-hanging fruit that are being taken now.
(2) Regarding rooftop solar: By nature of “piecemeal” additions, it’s markedly more costly and less efficient than dedicated solar farms. I do foresee, though, that new commercial and industrial buildings will have better integrated solar power systems than those that are retrofitted today.
Don’t have easy access to my notes right now but I’m sure one can look her up at Desmog. Skeptical Science has probably rebutted her frequently, maybe RealClimate, and others.
You can get where you’re going in an ICEV…
as long as you don’t run out of gas. Or diesel. Or have any of the hundreds of possible mechanical problems they’re heir to. As long as the gas stations aren’t too far or closed or outa gas… which will all be increasing problems as the world switches without adequate preparation or concessions to reality by industry and govt. because the lunatic right wing refused to make such concessions.
Numerous studies have shown 100% renewable energy is possible, and those who have looked have found it will be cheaper than energy now. Those people who claim otherwise have, as far as I know, no studies at all to back their assertions,* only an unrelentingly dismal record of cants. “Can’t put anymore than 1% VRE on a grid.” Oops, proved wrong. (By doing it, then doing it again, and again, and again, and again. 150 times.) “Can’t put anymore more than 2% VRE on a grid.” Oops, proved wrong. “Can’t put anymore more than 5, er…10, OK, 20% VRE on a grid.” Oops…
Kingsmill Bond and others keep pointing out this and many other realities that the reality-challenged ignore.
More than 50 countries now have grids of at least 10% VRE (or is it 10% solar? I don’t have my notes handy.) Despite the tens of billions spent on lies to endlessly delay renewable energy, maybe a dozen countries, and independent and semi-independent state/provincial grids are coming up on 50% VRE. Or looking at it in the rear view mirror. And I, Shirley, don’t need to remind you that we’re not just talkin wind and solar. Dispatchable hydro, micro-hydro, geothermal, batteries, and ever-shrinking, then disappearing, bioenergy, plus tidal (& wave? OTEC?) 70 countries are at 50% or higher, incl. Germany, 4th biggest economy in the world, 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize (The Sky’s The Limit study): 60% RE, ~35%+ W&S, rapidly electrifying its primary energy.**
“Solar and wind may decline another 5% in price and increase a couple of percent in capacity over the next 10 years.” Oops, 90% decline in price; a couple, three, four doublings of capacity. Have you seen the insanely intransigent lowballing of both by IEA and EIA? Funny, funny graphs (done by others).
If one has a choice whether to believe former climate denying delayalists who then switched to mere anti-renewable fanaticism lies, now are coming out again as climate denying delayalists (while retaining their membership in the canman club for ARFist endarkenment)… or experts who have studied the subject thoroughly and published, often for peer review…really? That’s not a choice. And the people with this anti-100 argument don’t even rise to the level of IEA. They’re just the Shillingburghers and Bjorn McBorgersons of the world, bad-clown psychopathic liars-for-hire. And then the Insane Moron Troll Posse repeating every stupid, dishonest word.
Can’t do 100 without huge expense at the end? Prove it.
As far as I’m concerned, it already has been proven it can be done cheaper than energy is now. By the time substantial parts of the world get there it will be even easier, cheaper, and more known. (We should cooperate to banish the dirtiest generation first, and the easiest to convert, by focusing on the low branches of efficiency, electrification, and establishing native RE, EV, heat pump, clothesline paradox energy, etc. first. We won’t while the right wing is in power in the US and elsewhere, but then, unless that changes soon, we’re doomed anyway.)
Rooftop solar (and offshore wind) drastically decrease the need for transmission, disproving that argument currently in vogue against RE, even though it’s a ridiculous argument on so many levels, like so many of them are. Rooftop price has come down even faster than utility solar’s, through standardization and the usual experience curve, and with Australia showing some other ways to do it. (See David Roberts’ video interview with Saul Griffith.) The current acceleration of industrial and commercial rooftop solar will um, accelerate that even more.
ARFs will say anything, use any excuse no matter how absurd, to disparage RE and confuse people. The truth is, small countries are far harder to renewablize to a high degree, because one of the main renewable tools is diverse renewable sources scattered in a distributed generation grid as large as possible. The fantastically wealthy US is the Saudi Arabia of diverse distributed renewables, with no excuse for not already being >100% RE except the insanity of our oligarchy.
See David Robert’s’ article on how DERs make a fully renewable grid more affordable.
Fossil fuels now cost the world well over $15 trillion a year in subsidies and externalities. (IMF and other sources)
Nukes also; enormous subsidies, externalities, and cover for nuclear weapons, for less than a 5% (and shrinking) share of global energy, and vastly decreased security, with all the expenses—open and hidden—of that monster, The Unholy Twinity.
*because their lies have prevented others from doing it.
**Primary energy is the direct use of fuels in buildings, industry, and transportation.
[Can’t
Replyto your last comment, so I’m putting it here.]The “last n% problem” is more of an engineering/economics generalization, because that’s where all the squirrely stuff starts to matter more.
I’d like to challenge those models that address long (e.g., seasonal-scale) periods with low sun and winds while having higher demand by pulling up, say, a gas power plant as an emergency backup. Recall that the problem with traditional thermal plants now (as Amory Lovins pointed out a few years ago), was that their initial capital investment agreements calculated RoI based on regular operation with income from the grid energy provided, and on a grid with more RE the thermal plant wouldn’t have as much energy sales income. It’s ironic (or paradoxical?) that a thermal plant that almost never runs, but has the same amount of maintenance, has a much, much higher cost/kWh, likely far beyond the expense of a peaker plant today.
“Right now, they’re ‘allowing’ us to pay for more land, transmission, exotic materials and backup.”
More than what, specifically?
Do you automatically discount tailpipe emissions, oil spills, polluted aquifers, and greenhouse gases? Combustion vehicles, for one, have had generations to “improve” them by adding sound mufflers, removing leaded fumes and adding catalytic converters. Coal plants over the years have had expensive mods to reduce the SOx, NOx and PM2.5, plus more to get rid of dammed slurry containments.
Have you accounted for the materials used by extraction technology, including oil rigs, well pipe and pipelines? Are you comparing the mining footprint of fossil fuels (extract, burn, extract more) to reusable/recyclable minerals? Are you comparing the combustion products of the early generation Moss Landing grid battery (“failure”) to many decades of global smokestack and tailpipe emissions (“acting as designed”)? Are you including the ongoing safety and material improvement in battery chemistries?
Batteries are great for replacing backup spinning, and associated ff burning, and maintaining grid stability.
As long as they haven’t run out of charge.
Technique is that batteries ‘always’ carry enough charge to prevent a ‘crash’. If they haven’t it means the grid is already tanked. That is the theory. Backup spin is ff intensive and expensive.
Hi Mike,
Grid-forming inverters can take the place of much of the reliability function that has been handled by the overall technology stack in a thermal power plant’s site, and the concept of “dispatchable” is already expanding beyond the narrow definition to include virtual power plants, demand response and other ways to keep demand and production balanced on the grid. The “dispatchable” sources were the biggest failures in that Texas freeze a few years ago, and in high-temperature peak demand times, some thermal plants are less-than-perfectly dispatchable based on heat stress or something as basic as their cooling water supply being too hot or, as droughts increase, too scarce.
And regarding spinning inertia – since a power plant is connected to the transmission grid, it’s completely feasible to use grid power (and on-site solar, or what have you) to keep turbines spinning after removing the coal-burning or methane-burning from the equation. Inertia’s inertia, it doesn’t require steam to spin up or slow down the rotation. But that’s less appealing already since it’s been shown around the world that grid-connected battery installations provide BETTER management of grid power quality – responding faster and more precisely than one would expect from enormous rotating lumps of metal.
Russ Schussler (Planning Engineer) has a couple recent guest posts at Climate Etc. on grid inertial. One of them is a case study of a city in New South Wales, Australia:
https://judithcurry.com/2024/12/05/wind-and-solar-cant-support-the-grid/
The other is an essay on how he thinks energy is being mischaracterized. I was surprised to hear him describe inertia as more of a problem than intermittency:
“The green energy narrative is misleading in presenting intermittency as the major problem and implying that as we address this problem, wind and solar become comparable resources to more conventional generating resources. The green energy narrative hides the problems of asynchronous inverter-based generation when it can, and minimizes the concerns around this technology when it can’t.”
https://judithcurry.com/2025/01/30/how-the-green-energy-narrative-confuses-things/
Scotland 110% renewable grid, 70% W&S including 67% onshore wind, 2% offshore, 1% solar.
Note 1: recent report on UK having the potential to provide 70-100% of its power from solar….. in the Skeptical Science article I already provided (incl., yes, NREL data).
Note 2: The UK’s tremendous offshore wind potential, with its much higher capacity factor, which could alone supply the UK with all its energy needs.
Note 3: Recent articles in CleanTechnica pointing out
a. construction of the first US solar powered steel mill, plus
b. UK’s current roughly 30% and rising EV market share, both revealing examples of the much-faster-than-expected electrification of primary energy—all the “hard parts” ARFs have been relentlessly whining about for decades. “Oooooh, we caaaaan’t…”
Denmark 64%? RE grid including 52% seemingly-always-blowing wind.
70 countries with mostly renewable electricity including 23 at or near 100%. Kenya, eg—of all countries—at 94%, largely VRE, some geothermal & hydro.
Iceland and Norway nearly 100% RE ENERGY, because contrary to the offensive despicable relentless cherry picking by lying ARFs, NO ONE said we expected to do it just with wind and solar.
If these writers at Skeptical Science and CleanTechnica are so smart, why don’t they go argue and debate with Russ Schussler or Rud Istvan or Chris Morris or .. even me? They won’t let me comment!
Why would they waste time on a petty ignorant lying denying delayalist? I don’t know why Peter keeps you around except as an example of such mental disturbance. He does that; there have been a succession of such scapegoats over the years.
J4Zonian, I’ve actually met Peter at a Bill McKibben speaking event:
https://cliscep.com/2023/04/30/i-went-to-hear-bill-mckibben-speak/
Judith Curry? Seriously?
You bet! She attracts a lot of bright, serious, tech savvy guest posters and commenters.
Yes, Mike, Judy Curry, the queen of uncertainty, has had that one person presenting his “essays” for years now, and ever since he began there have been more and more areas getting more and more of their power from renewables. You go and take the word of one guy posting opinions on a denial-of-reality site and the rest of us can look at professional and engineering organizations who publish their research and studies in normal channels.
Less than three years after I first started reading about climate science I joined IEEE Power and Energy Society because it was very clear that the main fix to warming was end use of fossil. I’m far from an expert on the topic, but let’s suggest that the main professional organization for electrical/electronic engineering in the US has looked more broadly at the issues than your fellow.
Here are just two without trying hard to find more.
Grid-Forming Inverters: A Comparative Study of Different Control Strategies in Frequency and Time Domains – open access, published in 2021 in IEEE Access
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9513281
Some of the Conclusion section: “GFMIs have emerged as a promising solution for the issues related to the high penetration of IBRs and weak grid scenarios. While having successful implementations in Australia, the US, and the UK at various power levels, the widespread use of GFMIs requires further advancements in their technologies and regulatory acceptance. This paper identifies several key challenges related to GFMIs, including small-signal stability, transient stability, over-current protection, and seamless transition between grid-connected and standalone modes. Moreover, control methodologies proposed in the literature for GFMIs are critically reviewed.”
Another – from 2024 in IEEE Spectrum magazine – not a study, more like opinion like Judy’s pal, but published by the main electrical engineering organization in the country.
“Getting the Grid to Net Zero
Grid-forming inverters will take us to 100 percent renewable energy”
https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter
Does your guy discuss the many failure modes seen and predicted in large thermal synchronous generating systems, since those also are increasing unreliability on our aging grid? Everything from coal piles freezing/flooding to disruptions in gas supply, to thermal tripping in heat waves, to the increasing difficulty in the hottest areas to use the typical spring/fall “safe” seasons for necessary maintenance.
That first link is an incomprehensible alphabet soup of acronyms and formulas, but it does have a one paragraph conclusion that is not all that conclusive with a “promising solution”, “several key challenges related to GFMIs” and “areas which require further research and development”. The second link is more readable and chronicles some progress, but still points out challenges. Neither comments on how much all this new whizzbang stuff is going to cost.
Replying to Mike complaining that a link to something related to engineering is technical. Sorry, but I think writing about something scientific or technical is best when written for the practitioners of the particular field, so that they can build on each others’ work. Replying to your guy’s blog “essays” with another blog essay advances nothing.
The grid is a complex system – and there’s tons of work going on in the field and in research, and it’s complicated. Rather then soak in posts on Curry’s fossil-fan blog, I highly recommend as maybe a start that you check out a 2016 book by Gretchen Bakke: “The Grid: The fraying wires between Americans and our energy future”.
It was quite readable and explains how the system came together and how we can change from being locked into 19th-century technology now that we have much better replacements. The grid’s been largely neglected as electricity demand was flat for a couple decades, but now we have to invest anyway, so doing it right over the next several decades is a better plan than trying to retain old things just because that’s how great-grandpa did it. Trying too hard to preserve the old architecture will only lead to more pollution, more climate damage and expensive power.
I’d read the following after replying yesterday, you might want to give it a look, too. Written by and about Australia but power is power and Texas is rebuilding their grid rapidly (as ERCOT island) also.
“The electric grid: Why we no longer need spinning machines”
https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-electric-grid-why-we-no-longer-need-spinning-machines/
Judith Curry?
That’s a blast from the denialist past!
For me, her most memorable gaffe was saying that satellite measurement of temperatures was the most reliable. Jeez-Louise!
Reply to other comment to which I can’t reply to to:
Just finishing Saul Griffith’s Electrify. Answers many of the concerns and concern troll arguments brought up here. In general the answers are a combination of better weather prediction (oops! Just destroyed the agency that did that!); diverse sources including of course, hydro, geothermal (with lithium and other mineral extraction to more quickly bring profitability more in line with wind and solar…more) and tidal, with tiny and shrinking amounts of bioenergy; distributed generation; pumped hydro storage;* demand response; overbuilding; pedagogy and childhoods that create sane people (in a sane society) who can adjust to changes.
No such thing as irony. It’s just a word we use to deny the fact that we didn’t understand the whole system well enough to predict all the obvious and inevitable things that surprised us.
Ask IEA about that.
*Once again…drum roll…China is waaaaay ahead, with 85% of the world’s PHS capacity and 85% of the in-the-pipeline (so to speak) projects.
Also, with its neo-neo-colonial “Silk Road” project aka what I think of as its Belt and Suspenders Initiative, China is also pioneering the Afro-Eurasian grid which puts off the question of the last few percent for a very long time.
Or not so long, with exponential growth of WSBEV and der Gropenfuhrer playing the part of Philip II, who turned Spain from the preeminent world power to a third world country in one generation. (Charles Fair, From The Jaws Of Victory, tragically outa print) We’ll need to surrender to it and allow the Bering HSR and communication/electro-transmission Tunnel, the Behucetrunnel, to allow the productive procrastination to continue.
Schussler: So, the question remains, “has anyone demonstrated that wind, solar and batteries alone can effectively supply reliable service to a general load of any significance?” I’ve never come across anything like that, perhaps because what’s been done so far</b. is nothing to brag about.
He doesn’t address even the early generation grid scale battery inverters we’ve had for a few years.
Meanwhile, in a different perspective on the evolving grid in NSW describing “synthetic inertia,” Fedunik mentions “[Synchronous condensors] are essentially spinning motors running at no load — an old technology that has long been used to deliver inertia and system strength. Numerous syncons have been installed around the country this year to deliver grid services as gas and coal power stations are retired.”
She then goes on to describe next generation inverter-connected tech as the future stabilizer of the grid, synthetic inertial response.
One thought: it’s inevitable. No, not sucking carbon out of the air, the end of fossil fuels
There’s a word for standing athwart history yelling STOP! To delay or impede the development or progress, to slow things up, especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment. From the Middle English, in turn from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French retarder, from Latin retardare, from re- + tardus, See also religioun, Middle English from Anglo-French religiun, Latin religion-, religio, sanction, religare to restrain, tie back
To restrain, restrict, prevent, obstruct, hinder, delay …
The end of fossil fuel may be inevitable, but not the end of hydrocarbons. Cal Abel, the inventor of the Natrium would like to use industrial heat from molten salt nuclear to make useful hydrocarbons from coal instead of crude oil and gas. I wonder if space tankers could go and get methane from Titan?
Jigar Shah did a good interview on the Cleaning Up podcast in February. The first two questions below are kind of being answered as the start of Trump’s 2nd term, but this might be good since last time his pledge to “save coal” showed results of more coal plant retirements than ever before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCOaF-qQ_TU
“How can the U.S. government bridge the gap between clean energy innovation and large-scale deployment? Will the Trump administration accelerate progress or put up roadblocks for clean tech? And how can the U.S. stay competitive with China, which already holds a commanding lead in the sector?
Jigar Shah joins Cleaning Up fresh from his four-year tenure as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). Appointed in 2021, Shah transformed the once-obscure office into a clean-tech commercialization powerhouse, committing more than $100 billion in loans to U.S.-based companies. But with a new administration implementing sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, is all his work at risk? Or will market forces and the very real risk of blackouts keep clean energy innovation moving forward?
In this conversation with Michael Liebreich, Shah shares how he turned the LPO into a driving force for clean technology deployment, and what lessons can be learned by policymakers, investors and entrepreneurs. He also offers a candid assessment of the opportunities and challenges across key sectors—from advanced nuclear to sustainable aviation fuels.”