Last year marked a turning point for the U.S. power sector. For the first time, wind and solar energy produced more electricity than coal for a full year. But the power sector’s greenhouse gas pollution still edged up, because natural gas generation also climbed to new heights, helping to meet growing demand amid a record hot summer and the rise of power-hungry data centers, writes Benjamin Storrow. Electricity demand in the United States has been relatively flat for a couple decades. Over that time, booming natural gas and cheaper wind and solar have increasingly replaced aging coal-fired power plants, leading to a sizable long-term drop in greenhouse gas pollution. The need for power is expected only to grow as artificial intelligence data centers proliferate and climate change makes the planet hotter. As a result, reducing carbon pollution from the electric grid — the nation’s second largest source of greenhouse gases after transportation — is becoming increasingly difficult, especially as the Trump administration tries to boost oil, gas and coal. Wind and solar combined to produce 15.5 percent of utility power generation in the U.S. last year, overtaking the 15.2 percent share produced by once-mighty coal. Natural gas remained king, though, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation’s electricity generation. (Nuclear ranked second, with 20 percent.) Now, the White House has set the stage for a more gas-heavy power grid. President Donald Trump has pledged to slash or eliminate federal financial help for lower-carbon technology. He’s halted wind projects on federal land and waters, prompting coastal states investing in offshore wind to tap the brakes. He has also pledged to use an order signed in January declaring a national energy emergency to speed permitting for infrastructure, particularly fossil fuel projects. How energy resources pencil out for the remainder of the decade is an open question. “If all we do is build more natural gas, our emissions are not going to go down. They might stay flat as they did last year,” Costa Samaras with Carnegie Mellon University told Ben. “Sooner or later, we’re going to run out of coal to displace.”
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