For the first time in recorded history, fossil fuels generated less than half of all U.S. electricity in a single month — a milestone that would have seemed impossible just a decade ago. According to energy research firm Ember, U.S. clean electricity crossed that threshold in April 2025 C.E., with coal, oil, and natural gas collectively falling to roughly 47% of total generation. Wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear made up the rest.
At a glance
- U.S. clean electricity: Wind and solar alone now account for more than 30% of U.S. electricity generation, up from under 5% in 2010 C.E.
- Solar growth: Utility-scale and rooftop solar have been the fastest-growing sources on the U.S. grid, with capacity more than doubling since 2020 C.E.
- Historical threshold: The last time fossil fuels generated less than 50% of U.S. electricity was sometime in the 1800s C.E., before the coal-powered grid took hold.
How the U.S. grid got here
The shift has been building for years. Solar and wind costs have dropped by more than 90% since 2010 C.E., making clean energy the cheapest option for new electricity capacity in most of the country. That price collapse drove a wave of investment that is now showing up in the generation numbers.
April is a seasonally favorable month for renewables — mild temperatures reduce electricity demand while wind and solar output stays strong. Ember’s analysts note that the April 2025 C.E. result isn’t just a seasonal quirk. The underlying trajectory has made this kind of monthly milestone increasingly likely, and year-round averages are moving in the same direction.
Nuclear power, which generates around 19% of U.S. electricity, played an important supporting role. It produces no carbon emissions during operation and runs around the clock regardless of weather — making it a steady backstop as variable wind and solar capacity grows.
Who built this grid
The workers who made this transition possible include a large and growing number of people from communities that haven’t always benefited from energy investment. Solar installation is now one of the fastest-growing trades in the country. Many of those jobs have landed in rural areas and in states — Texas, Iowa, Nevada — where agricultural and working-class communities have found new income streams through wind and solar leases and employment.
Indigenous nations across the Southwest and Great Plains have also moved aggressively into renewable development, negotiating energy agreements that keep more revenue on tribal lands than earlier resource extraction ever did. That thread of the story rarely makes national headlines, but it’s part of how this grid got built.
What the number doesn’t capture
One month below 50% is a milestone, not a finish line. Natural gas still dominates on hot summer evenings when solar fades and air conditioners run hard — the grid’s toughest hours. Battery storage is expanding rapidly, but it isn’t yet large enough to fully cover those gaps. Transmission bottlenecks mean that clean energy generated in one region often can’t reach the places that need it most.
The U.S. also still emits far more carbon per capita than most wealthy nations, and the pace of grid decarbonization remains slower than what climate scientists say is needed to avoid the worst warming scenarios. The April 2025 C.E. number is real progress — and it is incomplete progress at the same time.
Why this moment matters
Energy transitions feel abstract until they cross a threshold people can grasp. Below 50% is that kind of number. It signals that the old assumption — that fossil fuels are simply the default, inevitable backbone of modern electricity — is no longer true.
For context, consider what other clean-energy transitions have looked like at scale. The International Energy Agency projects that renewables will account for nearly half of global electricity by 2030 C.E. The U.S. is now ahead of that curve. Denmark already runs on more than 60% wind power in an average year. Portugal and Spain have run entire days on 100% renewables. These are not outliers anymore — they are previews.
The U.S. Department of Energy has projected that solar alone could supply 40% of American electricity by 2035 C.E. if current trends hold. Given that solar was supplying roughly 3% as recently as 2015 C.E., that would be a transformation few people predicted.
Progress on the electricity grid also tends to pull other sectors along. As more Americans drive electric vehicles and more buildings switch to electric heat pumps, the carbon content of that electricity matters enormously. A cleaner grid means every EV charged and every heat pump running is doing so on progressively greener power.
Related shifts are happening across the ocean and across sectors — including in how communities are protecting the ecosystems that make a livable planet possible, as seen in Ghana’s new marine protected area at Cape Three Points. And advances in medicine are keeping pace with advances in energy, including a landmark Alzheimer’s prevention trial that cut disease risk in half. Progress, it turns out, compounds.
For decades, U.S. clean electricity was a goal on a whiteboard. In April 2025 C.E., it was the majority of the grid.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Ember Energy
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana establishes a major marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on climate
About this article
- 🤖 This article is AI-generated, based on a framework created by Peter Schulte.
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