Sun Shone Brightly on Renewables in 2024. This Year Starts Strong but Faces Emerging Challenges
Some may say that the United States is facing an energy emergency, but the statistics tell a story of abundance in the here and now, if not uncertainty for the future.
A new report by the federal Energy Information Administration calculates that the U.S. produced a record of more than 103 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of energy in 2024, 1% than the record generation of one year earlier. Natural gas joined biofuels, solar, natural gas liquids and wind in setting brand new domestic production records for those particular resources.
Biofuels, which include renewable diesel, ethanol and sustainable aviation fuel, averaged an all-time high of 1.4 million barrels per day in 2024. This production generated almost 3 quadrillion Btus of energy for the year.
Solar rose faster, by percentage, than any resource with a 25% gain year over year. Solar now totals more than 1 quadrillion Btus on an annual generation basis. Wind power generation increased 8% to about 1.5 quadrillion Btus for 2024, according to the EIA.
All in all, renewable energy resources accounted for more than 8 quadrillion Btus, comparable to the total output of nuclear energy in the U.S. Those renewable resources include hydropower, geothermal, solar, wind and biomass.
Once the dominant feedstock of electricity generation in the nation, coal accounted for only about 10% of U.S. energy production last year. The coal production of 512 million short tons was the lowest since 1964.
The resource which surpassed coal in 2011, methane natural gas, strengthened its hold atop the U.S. electricity resource portfolio accounting for 38% of energy production in 2024. Overall national dry gas production totaled nearly 38 trillion cubic feet, maintaining reserves that allow the U.S. currently to become the world’s biggest exporter of liquified natural gas.
The abundance of natural gas is also guiding developers to pursue that resource to fuel data centers of the future. President Trump also has issued executive orders focused on increasing natural gas and nuclear energy projects, while inhibiting some of the renewable tenets of the Biden-era legislation.
Even so, 2024 and early 2025 represented banner years for solar and battery storage installation and manufacturing in the U.S. A new report by research firm Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) showed that some 8.6 GW of new solar module manufacturing capacity was added in the first quarter of 2025. The same report indicates that 10.8 GW of new solar generation was installed, with solar and battery storage accounting for 82% of all new capacity added to the grid.
The SEIA report, however, sounded a strong note of caution as the Trump Administration and GOP Congress work to possibly eliminate some clean energy incentives within the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
“Solar and storage continue to dominate America’s energy economy, adding more new capacity to the grid than any technology using increasingly American-made equipment,” said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper, in a statement. “But our success is at risk. If Congress fails to fix the legislation passed by the House – which would render the energy tax incentives unusable – lawmakers will trigger a dangerous energy shortage that will raise our electric bills and stop America’s manufacturing boom in its tracks. The Senate still has time to get this right and secure President Trump’s vision for American energy dominance.”
A separate analysis by SEIA on the House-passed reconciliation legislation warned that rolling back momentum for clean energy incentives negatively impact 330,000 American jobs and nearly $300 million investment could be lost. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it was terminating $3.7 billion in previously announced awards for decarbonization projects.
“The 10.8 GW of solar capacity installed in Q1 2025 represents a significant portion of new U.S. electricity generation, highlighting solar’s growing dominance in the energy mix,” said Zoë Gaston, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie, in the SEIA release. “However, our analysis suggests that the U.S. solar market has yet to reach its full potential. The proposed changes to federal tax incentives, along with ongoing tariff concerns, could significantly impact this growth trajectory and potentially lead to energy supply challenges.”
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