Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

SoftTalker

This is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output shrinking, solar output rising, the lines have crossed. Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.

ChrisArchitect

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48477729

leonidasrup

In other news: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states In 2025 US produced from solar 388.82 TWh, from gas 1,807.34 TWh. So solar has long way to grow to replace gas in US electricity production.

Aboutplants

Batteries taking over gas peakers is the next milestone I’m looking forward to. We will need gas generation for base load for quite a while due to the pure infrastructure that exists. I do fear that natural gas may end up as a Nuclear scenario where in we do not wholly embrace natural gas Fuel Cells that produce electricity with no emissions. Yes you have the fracking issue but the US owns that environmental damage within its borders instead of outsourcing mineral extraction to poorer countries. We solve the biggest issue with fossil fuels (emissions) while working on limiting environmental impacts on extraction. It’s also way less noisy than gas turbines and can be scaled to basically any size. Bloom is the gold standard right now but I hope they get strong competition soon, I truly believe/hope that Natural Gas fuel cells are a massive piece to the future energy puzzle.

harmmonica

Question for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually becoming a reality? Is it primarily regulatory where government, utilities, installers would fight it tooth and nail to protect revenue and/or the grid? Is it a legit safety issue? I have to imagine safety could be easily addressed in terms of the power management between grid and solar (obviously these balcony units are relatively safe, but tiny in comparison). Installation perhaps has more safety issues (e.g., installing panels on a roof), but I just wonder if it's reasonable to think that a more robust plug and play option will become available or is even already available in certain places. And I feel the need to say this, but this is the type of question I'd immediately turn to an LLM to answer, and I probably will ultimately, but I "still" like getting peoples' on-the-ground experience/expertise.

xnx

+1 to the Guardian for mentioning their data source, but -1 for not linking to it. +2 for EMBER for having a data source AND being able to link to the parameters that show solar overtaking coal for the month in the US. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...

ck2

don't worry this administration is giving nearly a billion dollar bailout to coal using war powers so congress can't block * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/04/trump-coal-d...

dnautics

The US currently is at per capita GHG emissions approximately at the the same level as it was in 1910. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states Despite not being in the paris treaty, the us needs only a 10-12% reduction to meet the paris accord requirements on schedule (43% decrease by 2030).

thelastgallon

This administration is hitting milestones without even trying!

thewhitetulip

There was an article recently about how the West Asia war is quickly decarbonising South Asia. Lot of solar and wind projects in the pipeline for SA countries. Especially because now renewables are a national security issue

Havoc

See that's why the cool kids are moving to clean coal /s

mbgerring

I work in clean energy, and whenever I read comments like those in this thread I realize there’s so much that I take for granted that is still relatively unknown outside my bubble. It's somehow still early innings for the energy transition, and there are a lot of fun engineering problems to work on. Join us, start here: climatebase.org

Torkel

The growth of solar is astounding. I dug into data a while back and tried to do some visualizations of it, mainly for my own understanding: https://torkeldanielsson.se/solar-energy-forecasts/ Solar is already by far our cheapest source of energy. As solar expands, the learning rate means solar will be even cheaper. We should expect solar to be the single largest source of energy on earth by 2035.

shevy-java

> Solar supplied 12.8% of US electricity in May even as Trump boosts coal over clean energy People at this point should realise that Trump is lying. He also does the same with regards to Iran. It is time to not only look at the Epstein connection, but also the corruption in that whole family dynasty. There has never been as much theft, I claim, as with that dynasty. (And Epstein plays a role because superrich partied with underage girls, and they told Trump to shut down all investigations. This is corruption in its final stage. Same here - Trump babbles about old energy but his superrich friends expand on renewables. And profit. As always.)

JoeAltmaier

Note that coal is dropping precipitously, which increased the effect.

h4kunamata

Easy, the previosu government destroyed coal for solar, it is easy that way.