Energy
Friday, July 15th, 2022 12:30 am EDT
Renewable Energy Keeps Growing in USA
Electricity generated by renewable energy sources continues to grow month over month and year over year in the United States. In April 2022, the share of US electricity coming from renewable energy was up to 29.3%. That was up from 24.8% in April 2020 and 25.7% in April 2021.
Looking at the first four months of the year, renewables provided 25.5% of US electricity, while the figure for January–April 2020 was 21.7% and the figure for January–April 2021 was 22.5%.
Coal power (20.2% of US electricity) was down year over year in this time period (from 22% in January–April 2021), but is admittedly still a bit higher than it was in January–April 2020 (16.8%).
Electricity from natural gas is also down year over year, but only very slightly (34.7% for both years). Though, it has dropped significantly since January–April 2020 (39.6%).
Electricity from nuclear power continued to take a steady, step-by-step tumble.
Wind & Solar Power Growth Strong
As reported earlier, April was the first month that wind and solar power provided more electricity across the United States than nuclear power did. Wind and solar power provided 21% of US electricity, while nuclear power provided 17.8% of US electricity (coal, incidentally, also provided 17.8% of US electricity, but wind and solar had provided more electricity than coal in some previous months as well).
Wind and solar power’s combined market share for the first four months of the year was up from just 14.6% in 2020 and 18.4% in 2021.
Looking at their growth year over year, you can see strong and continuous expansion of solar-provided electricity and wind-provided electricity.
Solar grew from 2.9% in January–April 2020 to 3.6%in January–April 2021 to, eventually, 4.4% in January–April 2022. Wind rose from 9.2% to 10.3% to 12.2%.
Together, wind and solar were up from 12.1% in January–April 2020 to 13.9% in January–April 2021 to 16.7% January–April 2022.
Hydropower (6.5%) is holding approximately the same position as the same period in 2021 (6.5%), but it is down a significant chunk from April 2020 (8.2%).
That’s a lot of data to swallow, but we’ve got much more. You can look at the full spreadsheets of these data over on CleanTechnica Pro. You can also view interactive versions of the charts used in this article on CleanTechnica Pro.
Lastly, you can dig into the original source of the data used in this article, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, if you want to get even further into the details.
Related story: Renewable Energy Provided 24% Of US Electricity In December
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