With the US power capacity data for the end of 2020, I thought it would be a good time to see how US power capacity has changed over the past decade.
Using data from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, I drew up two new maps highlighting the shifts that have taken place over the ten years. In addition to the charts, I outline how the market share of these different energy sources has changed. At the end of the article, you can see interactive maps – just note that they often do not display well on small devices (i.e. phones), so they can be better viewed on a laptop.
One thing to highlight before jumping to the equations: the total power capacity in the United States has changed very little in those ten years. The total power capacity of the country at the end of December 2010 was 1,132.68 gigawatts (GW), while the total power capacity of the country at the end of December 2020 was only slightly higher at 1 217.23 GW.
Another note: this report does not take into account small-scale solar power (mainly solar power on the roof).
In the first place, you can see that the solar power capacity of almost nothing (1.12 GW) has passed to a significant player in the market (52.58 GW). In percentage terms, it went from 0.10% to 4.32% in that time.
Wind power has meanwhile risen from 3.4% to 9.8% – an increase of 81.17 GW over the decade.
There was one big loser over that period, and a smaller loser. Coal power capacity collapsed, from 30.37% market share to 19.65%. A total of 104.73 GW of coal power was taken offline. Similarly (but on a smaller scale) oil rose from 5.4% to 3.2%. On the other hand, natural gas grew from 40.8% to 44.3%, and an increase of 77.44 GW from December 2010 to December 2020.
By combining all the options for renewable energy, renewable energy stands out much more boldly. They accounted for 13.8% of US power capacity at the end of 2010 and then 22.2% of the country’s power capacity at the end of 2020. In absolute terms, renewable energy ranged from 156.1 GW in December 2010 to 294.12 GW grew in December 2020.
Yes, the country still has a long way to go to see the renewable revolution come to life, and to bring up the idea that natural gas should be a growing source of power in the market, but the growth of renewable energy of the last ten year is definitely a positive story. Since it only covers large-scale power plants, keep in mind that the results for solar power and renewable energy will look a little better overall if small-scale solar power is added.
Here are interactive versions of the charts above (move across the bars to see the total installed capacity at the end of 2010 versus the end of 2020):
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