Chart: Almost all new US power plants are carbon-free

Wind projects made up 12 percent of new additions during the same period. Nuclear power contributed another 5 percent of the new capacity additions, thanks to the completion of the 1.1 GW Vogtle 4 reactor in April. Just 400 megawatts of new fossil gas went online in the first six months of 2024.

If developers follow through with their construction plans for the second half of this year, the clean energy bonanza will only accelerate.

By the end of 2024, the country is expected to have installed a total of 37 GW of utility-scale solar and 15 GW of battery storage capacity, per EIA data — both around double the previous record-high installation figures for each technology.

That blistering growth forecast is a welcome development. Power sector emissions are not falling fast enough in the U.S., and in fact are currently forecast to tick up by 1 percent this year. The only way to solve that problem is to build staggering amounts of clean energy, swiftly.

A report earlier this year tried to quantify just how much new clean energy the U.S. had to build this year to get power sector emissions on track. The report’s conclusion? At least 60 GW. Right now, per EIA data, the country is on track to build exactly that much carbon-free power this year — 60 GW.