BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 18. The share of electricity generated by natural gas in the US will drop from 42 percent in 2023 to 41 percent in 2025, the US Energy Information Administration Agency (EIA) says, Trend reports.
The big increase in solar electricity generation in 2024 and 2025 is mainly due to the addition of new large-scale solar power plants, the agency noted. Last year, the electric power sector added 19 GW of solar capacity, a 27-percent increase.
For 2024, the EIA expects US to add 36 GW more, and in 2025, another 35 GW will be added. With all this new solar power, the agency predicts that solar energy will provide 6 percent of all the electricity generated in the country in 2024, and 7 percent in 2025 - up from 4 percent in 2023.
As more renewable energy, especially solar, gets generated, we're likely to see less electricity coming from fossil fuels. The EIA thinks the share of electricity generated by natural gas will drop from 42 percent in 2023 to 41 percent in 2025, and coal's share will fall from 17 percent last year to 14 percent by 2025.
Even though natural gas prices are low, it won't necessarily lead to a big increase in natural gas-powered electricity generation, the EIA pointed out. That's because many coal power plants have shut down in recent years, leaving the most efficient ones still running. The agency thinks they'll keep going, even if natural gas prices stay low. About 20 percent of coal-fired generating capacity has been closed since 2020, the last time natural gas prices were this low. The coal plants that are still running aren't working as much as they used to.