Renewable energy sources were responsible for 25.7% of the total US electricity generation between January and October last year, despite pushbacks from the Trump administration, according to the SUN DAY Campaign.
The SUN DAY Campaign analysed recently-released data from the US Energy Information Administration, and found that renewable generation was second only to natural gas, the output of which declined over the same timeframe.
Renewable energy generation
As it noted, solar generation, encompassing both utility-scale and small-scale generation, rose by 28.1% in the ten-month period, compared with the same period in 2024, providing just over 9% of total US electricity generation, up from 7.2% a year earlier.
Solar also produced ‘significantly more’ electricity than hydropower, biomass, and geothermal combined, over the ten-month period, the data showed.
Wind remains the leading renewable source of electricity in the US, accounting for 9.9% of total electricity generation in the January to October period, a 1.1-percentage-point increase on the same period a year earlier.
Together, wind and solar provided close to a fifth (18.9%) of total electricity generation in the US over the ten-month period, up from 17.3% in the same period a year earlier.
This exceeds the contributions from both coal and nuclear power – while solar and wind both expanded, nuclear-generated electricity reported flat growth over the period.
Elsewhere, battery storage capacity increased by 45%, adding more than 12,000 MW, with planned battery capacity additions over the next 12 months likely to add another 56%, or around 22,000 MW.
‘Thus, since January 1 – roughly the beginning of the Trump Administration – renewable energy capacity, including battery storage, small-scale solar, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass ballooned by over 40,000 MW, while that of all fossil fuels and nuclear power combined actually declined by 218 MW,’ the SUN DAY Campaign noted.
‘Greatly outpaced’
“It is clear that – notwithstanding the roadblocks created by the Trump administration – growth by renewable energy sources and battery storage has greatly outpaced fossil fuels and nuclear power,” noted the SUN DAY Campaign’s executive director Ken Bossong.
“Moreover, it now appears highly possible that renewables and batteries could account for 100% of net new capacity additions in 2026.” Read more here.
