Wind and solar energy generated more of the United States’ electricity than coal for the first time last year, according to figures released by the US Energy Information Administration.

The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17 per cent of the country’s electricity mix while coal fell to an all-time low of 15 per cent.

Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, increasing 27 per cent from the year before, while wind increased 7 per cent. Gas generation continued to grow, at three times the rate of coal’s decline.

The use of coal has been declining since 2007 but as recently as 2017 it was generating more than twice as much electricity as wind and solar.

Daan Walter, an energy analyst at the think tank Ember, said that America’s wind and solar boom was being driven by the energy sources’ rapidly improving economic feasibility. “Solar has become so incredibly cheap that even running an existing coal plant is probably more expensive than building a new solar farm. That’s how good the economics are.”

In 2023 the think tank Energy Innovation estimated that it was more expensive to keep 99 per cent of the country’s coal plants running than it would be to replace them with wind and solar as well as energy storage facilities, with new solar production being a third cheaper per megawatt hour.

President Trump has disparaged renewables, falsely claiming that offshore wind turbines were responsible for the deaths of whales. His administration has taken moves to stymie the growth of clean energy, such as suspending permits for offshore wind.

Yet Walter expects renewables to keep growing rapidly. “We’re obviously going to see a hit to the offshore wind sector and we may see some limits of onshore wind and solar,” he said. “But these are hits compared to a baseline that was rapid exponential growth [of renewables]. So you’re still getting growth, you’re just not getting it at the pace we expected.”

After decades in which improving energy efficiency kept the US’s power demand stable, it was beginning to grow again, increasing 3 per cent last year. Demand is expected to grow further as tech companies build enormous data centres to power AI programmes.

While others have argued that large increases in natural gas generation will be needed to meet this demand, Walter argues that companies are most likely to meet it with wind, solar and batteries to deal with their intermittent supply.

“If you say you want a new gas plant to power your data centre, it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to get it up and running before 2030, whereas you need it in two years to show off to your investor that your AI bet was worth it,” he said. “So you need to rely on wind and solar because they’re the only energy sources that can be built rapidly enough and come in the right price range.”

“Trump can scream all he wants [about renewables] but it doesn’t really matter, because the economics are in their favour.”