The Daily Populous Sunday April 19th, 2026 night edition
Authored by canarymedia.com and submitted by sillychillly

See more from Canary Media’s ​“Chart of the Week” column.

It’s not an easy moment for renewable energy in the U.S., but the sector is still setting new records.

Just look at what happened last month: Over the course of March, the nation got more electricity from renewables than it did from natural gas, which is typically the single-largest source of energy on the U.S. grid.

It’s the first time renewables have bested the fossil fuel in the U.S. across an entire month, per data pulled from the think tank Ember. Meanwhile, emissions-free sources, a category that includes both renewables and nuclear, produced more than half of the nation’s electricity. It’s just the third time that’s happened across an entire month, the first instance being last March.

Sure, renewables only beat gas across a short time frame. And, yes, March is the start of the spring shoulder season, when electricity demand falls a bit from its winter highs and renewables tend to outperform.

But it’s a major milestone despite these caveats. Just five years ago, the gap between gas and even the best months for renewables was yawning. Since then, that gap has narrowed, thanks in large part to the rapid expansion of solar and the steady growth of wind power. Hydropower, bioenergy, and other sources of renewable energy have seen their combined share of electricity production slowly decline over the same time period.

Renewables have crossed this threshold amid serious political pushback. The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked the sector — especially wind — over the last year and change. Its policy shifts are likely to result in fewer new solar and wind farms over the medium term, but in the short term, they haven’t really derailed the growth of clean energy. In fact, March was the best-ever month for wind in terms of electricity output.

But perhaps more impressive is that renewables are growing their market share while overall electricity demand climbs. Put simply, clean energy is taking a bigger slice of a growing pie.

Gas power plants, for their part, remain difficult to build due to supply chain bottlenecks. Meanwhile, solar, batteries, and wind together will once again make up the overwhelming majority of new energy capacity added to the grid this year. The same was true last year. And the year before. And the year before that…

Fun-Vast4468 on April 18th, 2026 at 21:27 UTC »

Nice!

CDN-Social-Democrat on April 18th, 2026 at 20:35 UTC »

I've said this a lot here and elsewhere:

Solar Power, Wind Power, Grid Storage. These are the future.

Hydrocarbon Energy/Technology comes with huge costs. It's frightening just how unaware people are of the climate crisis and overall environmental crisis.

Already we have world record wildfires around the globe each year.

Already we have ocean warming and ocean acidification so bad that coral bleaching is wiping it all out (Destroying the life of our oceans is super super bad).

Already we are in the Holocene Extinction which is the sixth mass extinction in this whole planets history and this time humanity is the asteroid.

This is all at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. 3-4 degrees above pre-industrial levels brings hell on earth type stuff like Wet-Bulb Temperatures, massive geopolitical instability/crisis points, and a much much worsening affordability of life crisis/quality of life crisis of the working class and most vulnerable.

Also...... Renewable Energy isn't just cleaner. It is CHEAPER!!!!

sillychillly on April 18th, 2026 at 18:12 UTC »

"Over the course of March, the nation got more electricity from renewables than it did from natural gas, which is typically the single-largest source of energy on the U.S. grid.

It’s the first time renewables have bested the fossil fuel in the U.S. across an entire month, per data pulled from the think tank Ember. Meanwhile, emissions-free sources, a category that includes both renewables and nuclear, produced more than half of the nation’s electricity. It’s just the third time that’s happened across an entire month, the first instance being last March.

Sure, renewables only beat gas across a short time frame. And, yes, March is the start of the spring shoulder season, when electricity demand falls a bit from its winter highs and renewables tend to outperform.

But it’s a major milestone despite these caveats. Just five years ago, the gap between gas and even the best months for renewables was yawning. Since then, that gap has narrowed, thanks in large part to the rapid expansion of solar and the steady growth of wind power. Hydropower, bioenergy, and other sources of renewable energy have seen their combined share of electricity production slowly decline over the same time period."

Do today: share the Ember data link from the piece with a local official and ask what their plan is to keep adding clean capacity without leaving reliability behind.