According to a new industry report released Tuesday, the US power grid added more capacity from solar energy in 2024 than other sources that have been in the past year for over 20 years.
The data was released a day after new US energy secretary Chris Wright strongly criticised the solar and wind energy on two fronts. He said Monday at the launch of Cerawek by S&P Global, the annual energy conference in Houston, that they were unable to meet the global growing electricity needs and that their use was increasing energy costs.
A report produced by research firms Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie said last year that it added a new solar system capacity of about 50 gigawatts, far more than any other source of electricity.
Wright and President Trump are highly critical of renewable energy, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. defended it as a way to deal with climate change. The Energy Secretary, Trump and Congressional Republicans have pledged to cancel many of Biden's climate and energy policies.
“Beyond obvious scale and cost issues, wind, solar and batteries cannot replace countless natural gas use,” said Wright, formerly the chief executive of an oil and gas production company.
However, solar energy and battery storage systems appear to have a great deal of momentum and may not be easily blocked. The U.S. Energy Information Agency, part of Wright's division, said last month it hopes solar and batteries will lead new capacity equipment in the U.S. electric grid this year.
Advocates of clean energy praised the solar power milestone as the world moves to increase electricity production to meet the needs of energy-hungry data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence.
“There's a wild agreement that it takes enough power to do it and that there's a fact that there's a fact that the fastest way to do it and the cheapest way to do it is through the deployment of the sun and storage,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Association, said in an interview with Cerawek.
In the panel discussion, one of the nation's largest utility companies recognized solar's ability to quickly and inexpensively deliver new generation.
“We're excited to announce that nextera Energy, the largest producer of renewable energy, a utility that owns natural gas-burning power plants,” said John Ketchum, president and CEO of Nextera Energy, the parent company of Florida Power & Light.
But Wright said the increased use of solar and wind power has increased the costs of electricity, and has been steadily increasing over the past few years. Some of that increase comes from a rapid jump in oil and natural gas costs after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and an upgrade to the grid, where experts say the utility has been postponed for many years.
“Wind and solar were the beloved people of the last administration, and most of the world today, providing about 3% of the world's primary energy,” Wright said. “There has been a significant increase in wind and sun penetration everywhere, increasing grid prices and decreasing grid stability.”
According to the latest federal data, national electricity prices reached their highest levels in 2024, increasing nationally to $162.60, up 4% nationwide, typical 1,000 kilowatt-hour usage.
Even as prices rise, electricity demand is expected to increase dramatically. Ketchum predicted a 55% increase in electricity demand over the next 20 years. Almost a fifth of that is related to data center growth, with manufacturing and industry growth taking up a large portion of the rest.
Given the forecast for increased electricity demand, energy experts said the government should not lose sight of concerns about climate change and focus on the affordability, reliability and safety of energy both domestically and globally.
“There will be bumps on the roads,” said Ernest Moniz, the Energy Secretary for the Obama administration, during a panel discussion at Theraweek. “We are moving towards this low-carbon future.”
