A new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has found that despite Trump administration efforts to push coal and natural gas, renewables are still gaining market share at a “blistering” pace — especially in Michigan and the Midwest.
That’s particularly true when it comes to solar power. Michigan is served by part of the national grid called the Midwest Independent System Operator, or MISO. The reportsays that as recently as 2023, solar provided barely 1% of the system’s power.
But energy analyst and report coauthor Dennis Wamsted said that number had grown to 4.5% last year. He says that’s largely due to recent major improvements in battery storage technology that lets utilities capture and distribute renewable power as needed.
“It’s like a secret sauce,” Wamsted said. “You put them together and you have a competitor for any kind of coal or natural gas plant, because you now have dispatchable renewable power.”
Wamsted said solar’s growth trajectory in MISO mirrors that of Texas a decade ago. Texas is now the largest solar market in the U.S. Wamsted said MISO won’t necessarily see the same level of explosive growth, but “what it shows is that really fast growth is possible, and you can start to become a very significant part of the grid pretty quickly.”
Wamsted said that Michigan in particular is poised for a continued surge of solar power.
“Michigan is actually going to be one of the leading states for new solar over the next couple of years,” he said, with more than 3,600 new megawatts in the pipeline and scheduled to come online by 2028. That total “is the largest of any state in MISO.”
The growth in renewables “is not just a two-year blip,” the report said. “Fossil fuels’ share of U.S. generation is declining steadily, even as the demand for power increases.”
Wamsted said the data shows that — despite Trump administration efforts to prioritize fossil fuels and revive declining energy sources like coal — utilities increasingly see renewables as both reliable and cost-effective, and their market share will only continue to grow despite the political headwinds. “Nobody’s building new coal-fired power plants,” he said.
This revolution is driven not by green ambitions but by falling prices. The best solar offered “the cheapest electricity in history”, said the IEA in 2020, and it’s much cheaper now. Prices of panels have dropped 99.3 per cent since 1975, and by 95 per cent just since 2007, reports Our World in Data. And prices continue to fall, as China exports surplus panels — often older, simpler models — to Africa in particular.
Meanwhile, the cost of battery storage systems has plunged 93 per cent since 2010. And unlike with oil or gas, solar prices won’t spike because of war in Iran. Once you’ve installed panels, your daily fuel is free. Some homes even produce surplus energy to resell into the grid.
Solar is the most bottom-up, democratic energy source. In many countries it’s spreading not through state capacity but despite it, says Andrew Lawrence of Wits Business School in South Africa. People no longer have to sit around for years hoping that their state will build some gargantuan dam or coal-fired power plant, or connect them to its shaky grid. A simple technology can help poor countries go green even as international climate finance disappoints (see the recent collapse of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance).