96% of new capacity additions to the US power grid in 2024 are carbon emissions-free

[Simon]

In the US, natural gas for electricity production has usually outpaced renewables. But for the first time ever, renewables will clearly outpace natural gas in 2024.

Newly published data from the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), as reported by Ars Technica, shows that renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and batteries were each installed at a pace that easily dwarfs new natural gas generators during the first half of the year.

According to the EIA data, around 20 GW of new electricity capacity was added in the US during the first half of this year, with solar accounting for about 60 percent of that. Solar power is seemingly growing at an extremely rapid pace, even in the US. Which really should come to no surprise for those of us whom been following the news about renewables lately.

Following the rapid - and seemingly unstoppable - expansion of solar power are batteries. In the first half of 2024, about 4.2 GW of battery capacity was added in the US. As Ars Technica explains: "Batteries are treated as the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA since they can dispatch electricity to the grid on demand, even if they can't do so continuously."

By comparison, wind power in the US is being added at a much slower pace. According to the EIA, only about 2.5 GW of the new capacity being added during the first half of 2024 was from wind power.

Despite this seemingly small addition to the overall capacity from wind power, nuclear energy accounted for even less. Only 1.1 GW of new nuclear capacity was added, and there are no plans to add any new nuclear capacity in 2024 or even during the rest of this decade. This should also come to no surprise to anyone, nuclear power is simply too expensive and takes too long to build for it to play a meaningful part in decarbonizing our energy grid. Besides all the dangers and waste issues with nuclear energy, we simply don't have the time to wait for nuclear energy!

In comparison, natural gas accounted for only 400 MW, or about 2 percent, of the total new capacity that was added in the US.

And renewables will continue to outpace fossil fuels. EIA calculates that a bit over 60 GW of new electricity capacity will be added to the US energy grid by the end of this year. Solar power will account for about 37 GW, batteries 15 GW, and wind power will land at around 7.1 GW. EIA expects that natural gas will only account for about 2.6 GW.

"Throw in the contribution from nuclear, and 96 percent of the capacity additions of 2024 are expected to operate without any carbon emissions. Even if you choose to ignore the battery additions, the fraction of carbon-emitting capacity added remains extremely small, at only 6 percent."

It's obviously great to see renewables overtake fossil fuels in the US. And hopefully this trend will continue for decades to come. But reducing the usage of existing sources of fossil fuels is just as important as adding new capacity from clean and renewable energy sources.

So what does the EIA data tells us about that? Well, a reduction in the overall capacity from fossil fuels is happening, but it's going slowly. Too slow. During the first half of 2024, around 5.1 GW of capacity was retired from the US grid. And most of that was from fossil fuel-powered sources, including 2.1 GW of coal capacity and 2.7 GW of natural gas.