For the first time since the mid-20th century, nearly all new electricity generation being added to the U.S. grid is clean. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 96 percent of planned new power capacity in the United States for 2024 C.E. carries zero carbon emissions — a milestone that marks a genuine turning point in how the country builds its energy future.
At a glance
- Zero-carbon capacity: Solar, wind, nuclear, and battery storage together account for 96 percent of all new U.S. electric-generating capacity planned for 2024 C.E.
- Battery storage growth: Utility-scale battery capacity more than tripled between 2020 C.E. and 2023 C.E., rising from just 1 percent of new planned capacity to 23 percent.
- Natural gas decline: Planned natural gas capacity hit a 25-year low in 2024 C.E. at just 2.5 gigawatts — down from 21 percent of new capacity as recently as 2020 C.E.
Why batteries change everything
The single biggest reason this shift is happening now is battery storage. Solar and wind are cheap and abundant, but they only generate power when the sun shines or the wind blows. That variability has long been the argument for keeping natural gas in the mix — a dispatchable source that can switch on in seconds to cover the gaps.
Batteries break that logic. They charge when clean power is plentiful and discharge when it isn’t. One way to think about it: a battery on the grid works much like charging your phone while you’re already using it. The renewable energy that would otherwise go to waste gets stored instead, then released exactly when it’s needed.
This is why 14.3 gigawatts of new battery capacity is planned for 2024 C.E. alone — compared to just 2.5 gigawatts of natural gas. The old argument that renewables need gas as a backup is losing its technical foundation.
A two-decade shift, now accelerating
The U.S. power sector has been quietly decarbonizing for twenty years. Coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen sharply as natural gas and renewables expanded. But natural gas itself continued to grow, leading some analysts to worry that it would become a permanent fixture — a cleaner bridge that never quite reached the other side.
The 2024 C.E. data suggest that bridge is ending. Solar and wind together account for 71 percent of all new planned capacity, or 44.6 gigawatts. Combined with batteries and nuclear, the fossil fuel share of new capacity has collapsed to just 4 percent. That is not a trend. That is a structural change in how utilities plan their grids.
Between 2017 C.E. and 2024 C.E., battery storage’s share of planned capacity has risen in nearly every major U.S. power grid. In many of them, batteries already represent more than 25 percent of new planned additions for 2024 C.E.
Policy made this possible
Market forces are driving much of the shift, but policy accelerated it significantly. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022 C.E., introduced an investment tax credit for utility-scale battery storage covering up to 50 percent of a developer’s cost. It also included subsidies for residential battery adoption and production tax credits for domestic battery manufacturing.
The results in manufacturing investment have been striking. According to the Clean Investment Monitor, domestic manufacturing investments in battery production — for both grid-scale and electric vehicle batteries — grew from $2.3 billion to $9.9 billion following the IRA’s passage. As of late 2023 C.E., battery manufacturing represented 67 percent of all clean technology manufacturing investment in the United States.
That investment is now feeding back into deployment. More factories mean lower costs. Lower costs mean more batteries on more grids.
Demand is rising too — and batteries are ready for it
The timing matters because electricity demand in the United States is growing again for the first time in over a decade. Electric vehicles, heat pumps, and data centers are all drawing more power from the grid. In the past, that demand growth might have triggered a wave of new gas plant construction. Instead, the pipeline is full of solar panels and battery packs.
There is also a related problem batteries help solve: curtailment. In states like California and Texas, there are already moments when the grid produces more clean electricity than it can use. That surplus gets wasted — turned away from the grid — because there is nowhere to store it. As renewable capacity keeps growing, curtailment is expected to increase. Batteries absorb that excess power and redirect it, turning what would have been waste into usable clean energy.
The honest picture
Fossil fuels still supply around 60 percent of existing U.S. electricity generation. The shift described here is about what’s being built now, not what’s already running. Retiring legacy gas and coal plants will take years, require substantial investment, and raise hard questions about grid reliability during the transition. The milestone is real, but the work ahead is large.
Still, what is being planned today becomes the infrastructure of tomorrow. A grid being built almost entirely on zero-carbon sources is a grid that, over time, becomes a zero-carbon grid. That is what a turning point looks like.
Read more
For more on this story, see: White House Council of Economic Advisers
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Ghana protects a key stretch of Atlantic coastline
- The Good News for Humankind archive on clean energy
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