A companion piece to yesterday’s blog post:

“Hydropower plants, solar farms, and wind farms generated more electricity than coal in the United States for a record 40 days in a row, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said in a new report.”

Here’s a pretty picture showing this:

Green seems to be the go-to colour in these kinds of plots.

So, what does this mean in numbers?

“Coal’s high cost has made it increasingly one of the last fuel choices for many utilities, a trend reflected by its declining market share for electric generation: just 15.3% in April, according to preliminary EIA figures.

“In January, coal’s market share fell below 20 percent for the first time in many decades—and possibly for the first time in the entire history of the U.S. power industry—ending at 19.9%.

“EIA figures also show its share continued to erode, falling to 18.3% in February and 17.3% in March. As recently as 2008, coal’s market share was above 50 percent in the months of January, February and March.”

Even better in the overall scheme of things:

“FERC’s latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through February 29, 2020) also reveals that wind and solar are on track to each provide more new generating capacity than natural gas over the next three years. Moreover, the mix of all renewables (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) will add nearly 51 GW of new generating capacity to the nation’s total by February 2023 while that of natural gas, coal, oil and nuclear power combined will actually decrease by almost 2 GW.”

Though you’d really hope that the 51 GW of new renewables would come with a 51 GW drop in non-renewables, not a 2 GW drop. Also, biomass being classed as renewable energy is pretty debatable. Stay posted for a fireside chat about biomass one of these days.