Renewable Energy Is Winning, Trump Or No Trump

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In a temporary blip of insanity, the US electorate failed to learn from its first mistake, and sailed President Donald J. Trump into office for the second time on Election Day 2024. Many are now shedding the bitter tears of buyers remorse. Too bad for them. Meanwhile, the all-important business of climate action continues apace despite Trump’s death cult focus on fossil fuels, with renewable energy resources now claiming 30% of power generating capacity in the US.

Renewable Energy Now At 30%…

The 30% figure comes from EIA, the US Energy Information Administration, an independent agency affiliated with the Department of Energy.

You can follow EIA here, but for those of us in a hurry an essential resource is Ken Bossong, whose Sun Day Campaign organization diligently summarizes EIA’s main renewable energy findings and emails to a list, upon which is CleanTechnica.

Typically I’ll share a nugget or two from one of those emails, but this one is so encouraging that it’s impossible to pick out a few highlights. The headline says it all:

“Over the Last Five Years, Solar Capacity Tripled, Batteries Grew 20-Fold & Wind Expanded 33%; Renewables Now Generate >30% of U.S. Electricity.”

“New data just released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign, reveal growth of almost 11% in electrical generation by renewable energy sources in the first half of 2026,” the Sun Day Campaign elaborates.

“Moreover, renewables and battery storage are projected to add about 82.9 gigawatts (GW) of new generating capacity in the U.S. by June 30, 2027 while total fossil fuel and nuclear power capacity will fall by almost 3.1-GW,” they add.

…And Trump Failed To Stop It.

If you caught that thing about fossil fuels and nuclear energy, yes that is a thing that is happening, or not, as the case may be. Despite Energy Secretary Wright’s heroic posturing, coal power plants are still on the downward slide (here’s a recent example), and killing off the coal mining workforce is not helping much in terms of a future revival.

Meanwhile, my inbox is flooded with news of this or that nuclear energy venture, which is all well and good except that nothing of much consequence will materialize in the near future, and by the time the farther future arrives it will be too late. Renewable energy, particularly in the form of solar plus storage, has a speed-to-power advantage that nuclear just can’t beat. Here’s the Sun Day Campaign on that topic:

“Over the last five years, installed utility-scale (i.e., >1 megawatt (MW)) solar capacity has tripled while small-scale solar (i.e., <1-MW) has more than doubled. Wind capacity has increased by nearly a third and utility-scale battery storage capacity has ballooned by almost 20-fold.”

And, here’s the kicker, which bears repeating:

“Electrical generation by renewables sources grew almost 11% and was more than 30% of the U.S. total in the first half of 2026.”

Digging further into the EIA details, the Sun Day Campaign notes that electricity from renewable energy during the first half of 2026 was 10.9% greater than in the first half of 2025.

“The growth was led by utility-scale solar (up 21.6%), small-scale solar (up 13.0%), hydropower (up 10.1%), and wind (up 6.5%),” the Sun Day Campaign elaborates. “The combination of just wind and solar, including small-scale solar, provided 22.3% of domestic electrical production.”

Meanwhile, output from nuclear power plants grew just 1.7% and natural gas grew only 1.8%, reflecting longer construction timelines and, in the case of gas power plants, a years-long backlog of turbine orders.

“Electricity produced by U.S. coal facilities fell by 11.3%,” the Sun Day Campaign emphasizes.

Twisting the knife a bit more, the Sun Day Campaign notes that the combination of wind and solar produced 58% more electricity coal power plants and 28% more than nuclear during the first half of this year.

Renewable Energy And Energy Storage Are Coming For Your Fossil Fuels

Trump’s war on wind power has produced some results that should warm the cockles of a fossil fuel stakeholder’s heart, but a fresh burst of activity in the solar field has made up the difference. “In June alone, solar-generated electricity was greater than that of either wind or hydropower, making it the leading renewable energy source for the month,” the Sun Day Campaign notes.

And, there’s plenty more where that came from, considering the fresh burst of activity on the domestic solar manufacturing side, which Trump himself recently stimulated with new limitations on imported polysilicon.

Here are some more news bites from the Sun Day Campaign (breaks added for readability):

Over the past year, renewable energy capacity increased by almost 45,000-MW.

Between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026, the installed capacity of utility-scale solar increased by 28,076.7-MW while that of small-scale solar and wind grew by 6,492.0-MW and 10,552.9-MW (including 800-MW of offshore wind) respectively.

The combined capacity of all renewable energy sources – including hydropower, biomass, and geothermal – expanded by 44,889.3-MW.

In addition, utility-scale battery energy storage capacity increased by 17,858.8-MW. [3]

Over the past decade, renewably-generated electricity has grown rapidly as solar capacity increased nine-fold and wind capacity more than doubled.

Underscoring the significant role of energy storage, the Sun Day Campaign draws attention to 2016, when storage capacity was so minuscule that EIA didn’t even bother to report it. Storage capacity grew to more than 2.6 gigawatts in 2021 before leaping to almost 51.7 gigawatts by June 30 of this year, an increase of almost 20-fold in the past five years.

Don’t Let The Door Hit You On Your Way Out

The Sun Day Campaign has lots more on the latest EIA report (follow them on bluesky here). As for what that means in action, take a look over at Texas. Despite its red state political profile, Texas emerged as a wind energy leader in the early 2000’s and went on to compete head-to-head with California and Florida for solar leadership, too.

The state’s energy storage industry has been no slouch, either. The Texas power grid was struggling to keep up with demand and weather-related incidents not too long ago, but the speed-to-power factor kicked in more recently, enabling the grid manager, ERCOT, to deploy more renewable energy and storage to fill the gap.

“The fuel mix in ERCOT from July 21-22 demonstrates how ERCOT utilized solar during daylight hours and shaved peak demand with discharge from battery energy storage systems,” Renewable Energy World reported on July 23 under the headline, “As Texas temperatures soar, ERCOT crushes demand and generation records without incident.”

Turning now to the state of federal energy policy under President Trump — oh, never mind. As the saying goes, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. They also say there’s a sucker born every minute, and they say you can full some of the people some of the time — twice! — but you can’t full all of the people all the time…

Photo: Renewable energy is still crushing US President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel fantasy, with solar energy and energy storage making an especially strong showing (via CleanTechnica archive).