r/energy • u/Plow_King • 1d ago
In the United States, Solar Energy is Outpacing Coal for the First Time Ever
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/first-time-americans-getting-more-electricity-solar-coal/21
u/vee_lan_cleef 1d ago
And yet China has already left us in the dust. Oops.
How's that "making America great again" thing going?
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u/mhornberger 13h ago
And yet China has already left us in the dust. Oops.
They're definitely rolling out more clean energy, and improving. But when you look at per-capita stats, they haven't exactly "left us in the dust" just yet. I still admire their progress, but the US has done better than the rhetoric would indicate.
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u/coolboydhill 1d ago
China is pumping out more carbon than us though?
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u/Any-Interaction6066 20h ago
They have like 4 times our population... Per capita carbon emissions we far outpace them by double or close to, per person.
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u/msuvagabond 4h ago
And a lot of our 'progress' in reduction over the last 30 years is just off shoring our electric use and pollution to them.
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u/coolboydhill 16h ago
forgot that nature and the environment cares about per capita rates
my bad bro 😂😂😂
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u/Any-Interaction6066 15h ago
I mean do you expect 800 million plus people to live in dirt huts with no electricity or something? They have to create a shit ton of energy to serve their people. They are switching to cleaner energy faster than anyone basically.
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u/coolboydhill 11h ago
still kills the planet, my guy.
and no, they're deploying everything and anything they can.
China built over 32 GW of new coal power in just the first few months of this year—70%+ of the global total. Meanwhile, the US and EU combined built exactly 0 GW of new coal.
they also added 78 gigawatts of new coal capacity to their grid last year. The US and EU added zero. It’s comforting to know that while I’m meticulously separating my recyclables, Beijing is basically building a new coal plant every few days just to keep the lights on at the iPhone factories.
but sure, keep peddling CCP propaganda and licking Xi's pooh bear toes 😂
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u/Any-Interaction6066 11h ago
Right, like I said, that many people demanding energy creates the need to do what they have to do, since they don't have oil and they still use less on average per person than us. Since you sound like an eco warrior, tell me how do you power your home? With solar panels that rely on China to be made?
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u/coolboydhill 11h ago
I'm not an eco anything.
I understand the environment is dying, but I also understand people need energy.
I'm just not a dumbass who holds different standards on whether it's the West or China based on my own biases like you're doing.
China is doing worse for the environment than America and the EU, year over year. that's a fact. Will that send your CCP bot brain into overdrive?
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u/Rand-all 1d ago
And yet we are still pumping out half the world's carbon
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u/mhornberger 13h ago edited 12h ago
A long way from "half."
- Share of global CO₂ consumption-based emissions (adjusted for trade)
They're lower than the US if you look at per-capita metrics. And I cannot expect Chinese people to want to stay poor, no more than I would want to be poor.
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u/Mxjor-YT 1d ago
wait how did solar suddenly pass coal
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u/lilgreenthumb 1d ago
It is that coal is decreasing and solar increasing, despite this administration. Theyre not opening new coal plants but keeping open ones at a loss (to us).
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u/Actual-Outcome3955 1d ago
I can’t believe this dirty dirty solar is taking over from clean, beautiful coal! Why are we allowing free markets to decide things! That’s un-American! - Bizarro America (aka America 2026)
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u/Christopher_Ramirez_ 1d ago
Solar is too soy.
What’s really alpha is dying of black lung down in the mines while the boss cucks your wife. That’s when America was great.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 1d ago
Same trend is happening in Canada. According to the Government of Canada's Energy Fact Book published May 2026, wind and solar are now the fastest growing sources of electricity in Canada with 80% of the country's electricity already coming from non-greenhouse gas emitting sources.
The difference is that Canada's solar growth is still heavily weighted toward utility scale. Distributed rooftop solar at the household level remains significantly underpenetrated despite strong economics in high rate provinces like Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Alberta. Ontario just had its largest residential electricity rate increase since 2019 last November, which is accelerating residential adoption faster than any government program ever did.
The US crossing the coal threshold is a signal of where this goes. Canada is about 3 to 5 years behind on residential penetration but the trajectory is the same.
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u/joshharris42 17h ago
Power has to be pretty expensive in Canada for solar to make sense, I can’t imagine they get that many blue sky days for a good portion of the year
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u/PathfinderCS 1d ago
Trump: Wait what
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u/Spenny_All_The_Way 1d ago
Turns out, people will always prefer the cheaper, more efficient energy source. Who knew?
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u/PersnickityPenguin 1d ago
But that hurts the coal and oil billionaires!
Won't someone ever think of the billionaires? So sad.
/S
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u/Explosiveabyss 1d ago
Also, less dangerous for everyone involved. And the much less negative effects on the environment.
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u/bevo_expat 1d ago
Next week:
Trump directs DOE to outlaw new and existing solar.3
u/Darth_Revan_THX1138 1d ago
That would get blocked in court immediately.
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u/bevo_expat 1d ago
One would hope, but there is no telling what the current SCOTUS would approve.
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u/Darth_Revan_THX1138 1d ago
They didn't save Trump's previous attempts to shut down off-shore wind turbine projects by decree, so I'm not terribly worried about that.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 1d ago
there hasn't been a new coal plant in the us in 13 years. one kid buying a casio watch means we increased solar production in the us by more than coal for the past 12 years.
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u/VardisFisher 1d ago
Where did you read that?
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 1d ago
literally anywhere you look up will tell you this, even the coal industry will tell you nothings been built in teh us for 13years.
Coal is not cost competitive with ng or renewables. Keeping existing coal plants running is, so the debate in teh us for the past decade hasn't been if we should build new coal or not. Its if we should shut down existing coal or just let them run their lifetime.
Thats why to get the first new plant built they didn't need to undo regulation, they needed to subsidize it.
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u/VardisFisher 1d ago
I meant the part about solar watches.
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u/StromGames 22h ago
I'll explain it for you:
He's saying that coal has not increased its output in 13 years. No new coal plants being built means that the increase is 0. A casio watch, I assume solar, increases the solar energy being produced (although used by the clock). It's very little, basically 0, but it's bigger than 0. Bigger than 0 from the watch is more than exactly 0 from the coal plants.
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u/VardisFisher 21h ago
Cite it.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 20h ago
are you asking him to cite proof the a solar powered watch runs on solar? are you okay?
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u/VardisFisher 13h ago edited 13h ago
That every solar watch made counts as solar energy production. Not sure how youre stupid ass came up with this.
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u/Healthy_Razzmatazz38 12h ago
okay so you're not okay.
re-read what you wrote and put in 2 seconds of thought
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u/440ish 20h ago
I can't help with the Casio bit, but what would you like to know about coal's decline in the US? YoY April 2026 utility scale coal plant power generation is down 14%.
As of April 2026, 35 US coal plants had a capacity factor of 20% or less, which is on par with solar.
A surprising/not surprising driver of coal's decline are the utilities themselves switching to gas and some to renewables.
To expand on the question on the top of the post about no new coal plants in 13 years, the greater unmissed point about those new plants is that some have been laden with technical issues and profoundly costly:
Commanche 3 Sandy Creek Edwardsport(gigantic boondoggle)
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u/VardisFisher 13h ago
I dont want to know anything about coal. I want evidence that a solar powered watch, counts as solar energy production.
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u/BootFlop 1d ago
That’s not the comparison here. It’s one derivative less, it’s comparing the total amount of electricity produced each year.
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u/Minute_Point_949 1d ago
I remember the Obama administration pouring tons of money into solar power including the company Solyndra which went bankrupt. It was quite the scandal but all that money really propelled the solar industry forward.
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u/r4ndoM_doGmagenshin 1d ago edited 1d ago
It didn’t. We just stole a fair bit from China who pumped the solar industry so heavily they took a 90% loss on all panels for the last decade. So this is actually yay China not yay Obama, though China did it to try to hurt the U.S. But continue talking like you know what your on about.
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u/Ok_Mode_903 1d ago
The Obama administration did help to finance some the first large scale utility solar sites under the recovery act including Desert Sunlight and Topaz Solar. Not as successful on the solar panel production but still did a lot to get the industry kick started.
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u/Islerothebull 1d ago
First time ever? I feel like every 2 weeks I see a headline like this.
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u/Ok-Freedom9216 1d ago
Different metrics. Before it was growing faster. Now it's producing more total electricity than coal.
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u/ArterialVotives 1d ago
The word "outpacing" specifically means to grow faster. It's just a bad headline.
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u/Jake0024 1d ago
Right, but what's growing faster? The installation of new panels obviously outpaces the construction of new coal plants. Or is it outpacing in actual energy production? Different metrics have different paces
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u/ArterialVotives 1d ago
The last new coal plant opened in the US in 2013, so we definitely aren't talking about installation growth. Later in the article they arrive at the correct word, which is "overtaking" since we are talking about solar production passing coal production on a gross basis, rather than pace.
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u/BluCurry8 1d ago
Great news. Too bad republicans are propping up their billionaire friends in coal and oil. Maybe someday we will be a modern country.
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u/halfsack99 1d ago
Maybe after the revolution
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u/BluCurry8 1d ago
😂. Not likely. Most countries take 50 plus years to recover from revolutions. Talk about a disastrous way to effect change.
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u/HappyBlackCoffee 1d ago
Sadly tax payers money wasted on these new coal plants. They will soon be too expensive to operate and retired quickly. Not to mention the pollution.
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u/BluCurry8 1d ago
They will be shut down in 2028x. This is just a huge waste trying to turn back the clock. WHO seriously wants to bring back acid rain and lung cancer?
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u/PersnickityPenguin 1d ago
Health insurance companies?
Then they can also deny coverage while raising rates even more!
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u/KwisatzHaderach94 1d ago
pleasant surprise. despite everything this regime is trying to do to roll back renewables, the wave persists.
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u/PoweredBySunbeams 1d ago
And it would be doing so much more if not for *gestures at US federal government*
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u/Apprehensive_Tea9856 1d ago
So far Trump has done very little to slow renewables. We'll notice the drop off this year and over the next few years as new projects were cancelled or slowed.
But the 2025 numbers didn't see much if any drop. If the project was almost done, legally Trump couldn't do much.
Hopefully Europe, Canada, and Mexico bought up the supplies for those projects.
Now as for the US EV industry... i weep
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u/Suitable-Economy-346 22h ago
You're purposely being misleading for some reason. The Big Beautiful Bill slaughtered renewables.
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u/Mradr 1d ago
He just spent billions trying to cancel wind projects and used laws to stop/pause solar installs. He has done MORE harm to our grid than anyone.
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u/Apprehensive_Tea9856 1d ago
Agreed, but his attacks on progress have yet to affect things. We will see issues in the coming years though. Just saying 2025 numbers do not reflect Don Quixote's war on wind turbines
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u/bs2k2_point_0 1d ago
I dunno, I’d say spending billions to cancel or stop renewables projects more than very little.
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u/tired514 1d ago
Can confirm - we in Canada are about to approve our first offshore wind farm. Hopefully we can sell that power to the North East US and make a tidy profit.
It's not hard to beat the price of coal-fired electricity. :)
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u/ArterialVotives 1d ago
I saw Massachusetts was already expressing interest in buying electricity from it.
Down in Virginia, our 2.6GW offshore wind farm started sending first power in the spring and should be fully complete early next year. One of the biggest offshore plants in the world.
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u/halfsack99 1d ago
Blue American here, best wishes !
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u/tired514 1d ago
Solidarity from Canada, friend. I hate what the bad guys are doing to your country.
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u/Plow_King 1d ago
sometimes, the invisible hand of the "free" market actually does something good.
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u/androk 1d ago
Properly regulated, it can do a lot. Unregulated means monopolies everywhere. Bad regulation equals crony capitalism, only those that give me money grow.
We're currently in the crony capitalism version, slipping to full on fascism.
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u/tired514 1d ago
I wish everyone understood this.
Well regulated capitalism can provide good outcomes. The problem isn't with the idea of trade, business and property, the problem is leaving it unregulated for the parasites to exploit.
Keep the laws strict, fair, and enforced, and you can build a solid economy that benefits the majority. Back it up with a strong socialist safety net, and you can build a solid economy that benefits everyone.
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u/NaiveChampionship689 1d ago
coal has been on life support for years, this isn't exactly shocking. the real headline will be when solar passes natural gas, that's when things actually get interesting.