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Renewables provided 90% of new US capacity in 2024 – FERC

Renewable energy – solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, biomass – accounted for more than 90% of total US electrical generating capacity added in 2024, (FERC) and reviewed by the SUN DAY campaign.

Solar alone accounted for over 81% of the new capacity. Moreover, December was the 16th month in a row in which solar was the largest source of new capacity.

Renewables made up the lion’s share of new generating capacity in December and in 2024. In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure improvement” investigation (with data through December 31, 2024), FERC says 105 “units” of solar totaling 4,369 megawatts (MW) came online in December, along with two units of wind (324 MW) and two units of biomass (45 MW). Combined, they accounted for [website] of all new generating capacity added during the month. Natural gas provided the balance: 717 MW.

During the full 2024 calendar year, solar and wind added 30,816 MW and 3,128 MW, respectively. Combined with 213 MW of hydropower, 51 MW of biomass, and 29 MW of geothermal steam, renewables accounted for [website] of added capacity. The balance consisted of the 1,100 Vogtle-4 nuclear reactor in Georgia, plus 2,428 MW of natural gas, 13 MW of coal, 11 MW of oil, and 28 MW of “other.”.

Solar was [website] of new capacity in December and [website] during 2024. Solar accounted for [website] of all new generating capacity placed into service in 2024 – 50% more than the solar capacity added in 2023.

In December alone, solar comprised [website] of all new capacity added.

New solar capacity added in 2024 is almost nine times that added by natural gas and nuclear power combined.

Solar has now been the largest source of new generating capacity added each month for 16 months straight, from September 2023 – December 2024.

Adjusting for the differences in capacity factors among solar, nuclear, and natural gas, the new solar capacity added in 2024 is likely to generate seven times as much electricity as the new nuclear capacity and about five times as much as might be expected from the new natural gas capacity.

Solar + wind are now almost 22% of US utility-scale generating capacity. New wind accounted for much of the balance ([website] of capacity additions, which is more than either the new natural gas capacity ([website] or nuclear power capacity ([website].

Taken together, the installed capacities of just solar ([website] and wind ([website] now constitute more than one-fifth ([website] of the US’s total available installed utility-scale generating capacity.

However, approximately 30% of US solar capacity is in the form of small-scale ([website], rooftop) systems that aren’t reflected in FERC’s data. Including that additional solar capacity would bring the share provided by solar + wind closer to a quarter of the US total.

With the inclusion of hydropower ([website], biomass ([website], and geothermal ([website], renewables now claim a [website] share of total US utility-scale generating capacity. If small-scale solar capacity is included, renewables are now about one-third of total US generating capacity.

Solar’s share of US generating capacity is now 10x greater than a decade ago. As noted, by the end of 2024, solar and wind accounted for [website] and [website], respectively, of all installed utility-scale generating capacity in the US, while the mix of all renewables accounted for [website].

In December 2023, FERC reported that solar and wind were [website] and [website] of installed capacity while the mix of all renewables provided [website].

Five years ago (December 2019), FERC released data showing solar and wind to be [website] and [website] of total capacity while all renewables combined were [website].

A decade ago (December 2014), FERC reported that solar and wind were [website] and [website] of total capacity, while the combination of all renewables accounted for [website] of capacity.

Solar will soon become the second-largest source of US generating capacity. net “high probability” additions of solar between January 2025 and December 2027 total 91,558 MW – an amount almost four times the forecast net “high probability” additions for wind (23,601 MW), the second-fastest growing resource. FERC also foresees growth for hydropower (1,345 MW), geothermal (90 MW), and biomass (61 MW).

Taken together, the net new “high probability” capacity additions by all renewable energy findings would total 116,655 MW, with solar comprising over 78% and wind providing another 20%.

On the other hand, there is no new nuclear capacity in FERC’s three-year forecast, while coal, oil, and natural gas are projected to contract by 23,925 MW, 2,293 MW, and 833 MW, respectively.

If FERC’s current “high probability” additions materialize, by January 1, 2028, solar will account for nearly one-sixth ([website] of the US’s installed utility-scale generating capacity. That would be greater than either coal or wind (both [website] and substantially more than either nuclear power or hydropower (both [website].

In fact, assuming current growth rates continue, the installed capacity of utility-scale solar is likely to surpass coal and wind within the next two years, placing solar in second place for installed generating capacity, behind natural gas.

Meanwhile, the mix of all renewables is now adding about two percentage points each year to its share of generating capacity. Thus, by January 1, 2028, renewables would account for [website] of the total available installed utility-scale generating capacity – rapidly approaching that of natural gas ([website] – with solar and wind constituting more than three-quarters of the installed renewable energy capacity.

All renewables combined are on track to exceed natural gas within three years. As noted, FERC’s data don’t account for the capacity of small-scale solar systems. If that’s factored in, within three years, total US solar capacity could surpass 320 GW. In turn, the mix of all renewables would then exceed 40% of total installed capacity while the share of natural gas share would drop to about 37%.

Moreover, there may actually be as much as 222,443 MW of net new solar additions in the current three-year pipeline in addition to 68,815 MW of new wind, 8,659 MW of new hydropower, 199 MW of new geothermal, and 127 MW of new biomass. By contrast, the net new natural gas capacity potentially in the three-year pipeline totals just 19,438 MW. Thus, the share of renewables share could be even greater by early 2028.

“For more than a decade, renewable energy information – led by solar – have dominated growth in US generating capacity,” noted the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director Ken Bossong. “Consequently, efforts by the Trump Administration to reverse this trend are both illogical and likely to fail.”.

FERC’s latest data further illustrates how utterly ridiculous Trump’s “national energy emergency” executive order is. The steady growth of clean energy, which has kept large energy markets like Texas out of trouble during weather events, disproves Trump’s indicates that the US clean energy supply is “precariously inadequate and intermittent.”.

Further, his refusal to even define solar and wind as “energy” in that executive order isn’t going to stop their progress, and both he and his new secretary of energy, Chris Wright, telling lies about renewables isn’t going to make them any less clean, affordable, or reliable.

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Tesla Sales Are Tanking Across The World

Bitcoin, emissions credits and promises about artificial intelligence can only do so much. Like it or not, Tesla is still a car organization. And Tesla's sales are not off to a great start in 2025.

In recent days, full-year and January sales results from various markets around the world indicate a bleak picture for the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle business. Even as it added the Cybertruck to its lineup in large volumes last year—which should have unlocked more buyers in America's expansive pickup truck field—Tesla is seeing serious declines in places where it once had a near-lock on electric sales. Let's take a look at some of the areas taking the hardest hits.

As various outlets covered this week, the California New Car Dealers Association's (CADA) latest data indicates that EV sales leveled off in the Golden State last year, holding steady at [website] of new-car sales and just slightly up from 2023's result of 25%. Granted, while it's quite impressive for one in four new cars sold in California to be entirely electric, a slowdown in once-rapid EV growth has coincided with a big decline in Tesla sales.

Their investigation doesn't mince words. "All of the decrease in the state market last year was attributable to Tesla, which had an [website] decline," it revealed. "Registrations for all other brands increased [website]" And that's for all new passenger vehicle registrations in California, not just EVs.

Photo by: InsideEVs The new Tesla Model Y will be released globally in March. Can it help reverse these sales declines?

Toyota, Tesla, Honda, Ford, and Chevrolet were the market-share leaders in California last year, and the Tesla Model Y kept its "best-selling light truck" crown. Yet California saw almost 30,000 fewer Model 3 registrations compared to 2023. The Model Y fared improved, but was still down more than 4,000 units. The Cybertruck was California's top-selling electric truck, but cracked a mere 9,019 registrations—not quite what you'd expect in an affluent, EV-friendly market and the one where Tesla was born. That was only 434 registrations off the aging and expensive Tesla Model X, for example.

The story gets worse in other parts of the world. In Germany, where Tesla was the longtime EV sales leader even as new entries from Volkswagen, BMW, Audi and various Chinese brands started showing up, sales declined a whole 60% in January—just 1,277 registrations in Europe's biggest car market, . Tesla’s sales were also down 63% in France in January, another large car market, from a year earlier. They also dropped 8% in the UK year-over-year in January even as all-electric vehicle sales rose to 21% of the British new car market, a seven-point increase from 2024. "No Tesla cracked the UK's top 10 best-seller list last month, something that has regularly happened in the past," Ars Technica reported this week.

And one trend that's especially worth watching is what's happening in China, which makes up more than a third of Tesla's global sales. In China, which leads the world in total all-electric and hybrid sales, Tesla dropped [website] in January.

There are a few things that should be taken into account for these sales declines. Tesla once dominated EV sales but new competitors are showing up left and right, including in areas where Tesla doesn't play, like three-row SUVs. In China, sales often slow around the Lunar New Year holiday festivities and Tesla also implemented factory upgrades at its Gigafactory Shanghai plant to build the updated "Juniper" Model Y. And in several European markets, EV sales have been uneven or outright declined as various countries ended their subsidy programs; as a result, there are now calls for EU-wide subsidies that would promote growth across the entire bloc to counter new imports from China.

But one factor feels inescapable at this point: the backlash to Elon Musk's increased involvement in politics. In the [website], the Tesla CEO spent the past week—illegally, —breaching the [website] Treasury Department's payment systems as part of President Trump's effort to unilaterally defund various government agencies. In Germany, Musk's vocal support of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been widely cited as a turn-off for EV buyers, and the same has been mentioned of his politics in the UK.

Though it's hard to gauge empirically, Musk's far-right political turn does seem to be having an effect on Tesla sales—especially among the more affluent, urban progressive-to-centrist buyers traditionally more inclined to buy EVs in many places. A recent analysis from the nonpartisan EV Politics Project indicates that Tesla and Musk are losing support among EV intenders and Democratic-leaning buyers faster than they're gaining support from people on the other side of the political spectrum, who tend to be less interested in EVs. In other words, Musk is losing Tesla sales ground with the traditional EV base, and not making it up with any of his new supporters.

Photo by: InsideEVs EV Politics Project Slide.

"Republicans are creeping toward greater EV acceptance and willing or not, Elon’s journey to MAGA may have helped that," the group expressed in its latest findings. "Meanwhile, the Elon-driven Tesla headwinds problem among non-Republican consumers is clearly growing."

Though Tesla's stock surged after the election, attributed to investor faith in Musk's close relationship with Trump being able to help clear hurdles for goals like autonomous car deployment, it has sunk in recent days due to these dismal sales reports.

The biggest thing to watch this year may be the release of the updated Model Y. In theory, a big refresh for the world's best-selling EV (and by some metrics, best-selling car, period) should jump-start sales in a major way. But if buyers are counting out the brand because of Musk, the success or failure of that car will be the ultimate barometer.

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