Wind and Solar Overtook Coal in the U.S. Power Mix

Wind and solar generated more U.S. electricity than coal in 2024 for the first full year on record — 17.2% versus 14.8% of net generation. Data, sources and methodology.

A fuel’s share of the generation mix is the outcome of three slow-moving forces — plant retirements, relative running costs, and new capacity additions — that rarely move a system as fast as the U.S. grid has moved since 2008.

In 2024, the combined share of wind and solar in U.S. net electricity generation exceeded that of coal for the first full calendar year on record. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Energy Review, wind and solar together supplied 17.2% of net generation that year — about 756 terawatt-hours — against coal’s 14.8%, or roughly 652 terawatt-hours. The gap held in 2025, on preliminary data. This page documents the crossing, places it in the 35-year trajectory of the mix, and isolates what the data does and does not establish.

The interactive chart above can be switched between the full four-source mix, the coal-versus-wind+solar crossing on its own, and the split of wind against solar — useful for seeing which of the two renewable sources is doing the work, and when.

The transition is usually told as a coal-to-gas story

The dominant account of the U.S. electricity transition is, correctly, a natural-gas story. Coal supplied 56.9% of U.S. net generation at its 1988 peak and 52% as recently as 1990; by 2008 it was still 48%. The shale-driven collapse in U.S. natural gas prices after 2008 made gas-fired generation cheaper to run than much of the existing coal fleet, and gas overtook coal as the largest single source in 2016. Over the same window, federal and state policy, falling equipment costs, and tax incentives drove the build-out of wind and, later, solar capacity.

On this telling, renewables are a secondary character: real, growing, but not the agent that displaced coal. The agent was gas. The data supports that framing on the displacement question — which makes the 2024 crossing easy to misread.

The empirical crossing, in shares

The milestone is specific and measurable. In 2023, coal’s share of net generation (15.9%) still exceeded the combined wind-and-solar share (15.5%). In 2024, the order reversed: wind+solar reached 17.2% and coal fell to 14.8%. Because EIA’s annual series extends back to 1949 and coal was the single largest source for most of the twentieth century, 2024 is the first full calendar year in which wind and solar, taken together, out-generated coal nationally.

The crossing reflects movement on both sides. Coal’s share fell roughly one and a half points between 2023 and 2024; the combined wind-and-solar share rose by a comparable amount, driven mostly by solar, whose share — including small-scale, distributed photovoltaics — climbed from 5.6% in 2023 to 6.9% in 2024 and to 8.6% in 2025 on preliminary data. By 2025, wind+solar (18.9%) had also edged past nuclear (17.4%), leaving coal (16.3%) in fourth place behind gas (40.2%), wind+solar, and nuclear.

What the crossing does not establish

Three qualifications keep the milestone in proportion. First, the crossing is a measure of mix, not of dominance. Natural gas remains the largest source by a wide margin — about 40% of generation, more than double the wind-and-solar share — and over the full 1990–2025 window gas added roughly 28 points of share against coal’s 36-point decline, while wind+solar added about 19. On the displacement question, gas did more of the work than renewables did.

Second, the series is not a one-way decline. Coal’s share rose from 14.8% in 2024 to 16.3% in 2025 on preliminary data, as natural gas prices firmed and total U.S. generation rose to a record after a near-flat decade — up 2.8% year on year, on EIA data. That reversal is invisible if the trajectory is described as monotonic: the crossing held in 2025 because wind and solar rose faster, not because coal kept falling.

Third, share is not volume. A source’s share can rise while its absolute generation is flat or falling, because the denominator — total generation — moves. With U.S. demand rising again, led by data-center and industrial load (EIA), a shift in shares does not by itself describe what is happening to any source’s output in terawatt-hours. The downloadable dataset reports both.

The 2025 mix, ranked

The table ranks the four largest sources by share of net generation in 2025 (preliminary), with 1990 shown for contrast.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review (Tables 7.2a and 10.6). Shares of total net generation, all sectors. Solar includes estimated small-scale photovoltaics. Wind+solar excludes hydropower. 2025 preliminary. Eco3min calculation.

What would confirm or reverse the crossing

Stated without prescription, three observable conditions bear on whether the 2024 crossing proves durable.

• Reversal condition. The crossing would be undone in any full calendar year in which coal’s share again exceeded the combined wind-and-solar share. That did not occur in 2025, when coal (16.3%) remained below wind+solar (18.9%) despite coal’s partial rebound.
• Confirmation signal. Continued solar share gains have widened the gap: solar rose from 6.9% of generation in 2024 to 8.6% in 2025, more than offsetting coal’s rebound in the same year.
• Calendar catalyst. EIA finalizes full-year 2025 generation data in late 2026; its Short-Term Energy Outlook updates monthly in the interim. Each release can move the preliminary 2025 shares used here.

Methodology and Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

Did wind and solar really generate more electricity than coal in the U.S.?

In 2024, yes, for the first full calendar year on record: wind and solar combined supplied 17.2% of U.S. net generation against coal’s 14.8%, per EIA’s Monthly Energy Review. The combined share remained ahead of coal in 2025 on preliminary data (18.9% versus 16.3%).

Does this figure include rooftop solar?

Yes. The 17.2% figure includes estimated small-scale, distributed photovoltaics (EIA Table 10.6) in addition to utility-scale wind and solar. Excluding small-scale solar, the 2024 combined share is about 15.6%, still above coal’s roughly 15.1% on the same basis. The small-scale estimate widens the gap and aligns the figure with EIA’s headline 17%, but the crossing holds either way.

Has coal’s share fallen every year?

No. Coal’s share has fallen from 56.9% at its 1988 peak to 16.3% in 2025, but not monotonically. It rose from 14.8% in 2024 to 16.3% in 2025 as natural gas prices firmed and total electricity demand increased. The 2024 crossing held in 2025 because wind and solar rose faster, not because coal continued to decline.

What is the largest source of U.S. electricity now?

Natural gas, at about 40% of net generation in 2025 (preliminary) — more than double the combined wind-and-solar share. Wind+solar ranked second, nuclear third, and coal fourth.

Conclusion

The U.S. generation mix has gone from one source supplying more than half of all electricity in 1990 to a four-source structure in 2025: natural gas at about 40%, then wind+solar, nuclear, and coal clustered within roughly three points of one another between 16% and 19%. The 2024 wind-and-solar-over-coal crossing is a genuine first, and on preliminary data it widened in 2025 — but it sits inside a mix whose lower tier is now tightly bunched and whose total is growing again.

That combination — a clustered lower tier and rising demand from data centers and electrification — is what makes the next few years a measurable test rather than a settled trend: whether the crossing widens as solar additions continue, or oscillates as coal responds to gas prices and load growth. The dataset is built to be updated as each EIA release lands.

The data and analysis on this page are provided for informational and educational purposes only. They do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to take any action. Eco3min is a non-prescriptive financial-information publisher.