{"id":663503,"date":"2026-05-25T04:52:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T04:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663503\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T04:52:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T04:52:28","slug":"solar-to-overtake-coal-on-texas-grid-for-the-first-time-ever-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/663503\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar to overtake coal on Texas grid for the first time ever this\u00a0year"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by Canary Media<\/a>\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/p>\n

The Texas sun keeps rising, as Texas coal\u00a0wanes.<\/p>\n

For the first time ever, solar is set to generate more electricity than coal in the power market managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. Nobody is building new coal power plants in the state, but developers are\u00a0adding more solar there<\/a>\u00a0than anywhere else in the country. As a\u00a0result of those diverging trajectories, the\u00a0federal government expects<\/a>\u00a0ERCOT\u00a0will receive\u00a078\u00a0billion kilowatt-hours from solar in\u00a02026 and just\u00a060\u00a0from\u00a0coal.<\/p>\n

This trend does have seasonal variations. Last year, solar output beat coal on a\u00a0monthly basis from March through August, and this year it is expected to do so from March through December, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, at the Department of Energy.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the combination of\u00a0wind and solar surpassed coal generation<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a02024, as noted in an analysis by Ember, a\u00a0think tank that conducts research on clean energy. In other words, the solar industry is further along in Texas than it is nationwide.<\/p>\n

The Texas solar surge undercuts the prevailing energy narratives coming out of the Trump administration, which has attempted to\u00a0boost coal<\/a>\u00a0and gas as tools of\u00a0\u200b\u201cenergy dominance,\u201d while blocking or\u00a0canceling<\/a>\u00a0American energy that comes from renewables. The Department of Energy, for instance,\u00a0is keeping struggling coal plants on life support<\/a>\u00a0at great expense to taxpayers. Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior\u00a0is blocking wind and solar developments<\/a>\u00a0that intersect with public lands.<\/p>\n

Read Next<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

How deep-red Utah helped launch a portable plug-in solar movement<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump officials have argued that coal is more reliable than solar because it can generate power around the clock. But even with that advantage, coal plants in Texas can\u2019t keep up with the total annual and monthly production from the rapidly growing solar fleet. This has not damaged grid reliability, because\u00a0ERCOT\u00a0meets evening demand with a\u00a0diverse portfolio, including gas plants, nuclear, wind, and, increasingly,\u00a0batteries<\/a>, which store all that excess solar power for use when the sun stops shining.<\/p>\n

Of course, Texas leaders did not set out to disprove the Trump administration\u2019s energy claims. The maverick Lone Star State kept its electricity system\u00a0out of the hands of federal regulators<\/a>, and in the\u00a01990s and early\u00a02000s reformed it to promote free market competition instead of centralized planning by monopoly utilities. That market, coupled with lots of space and lax building regulations, has made an ideal environment for wind, solar, and batteries to flourish. Now, Texas is fortified with tens of gigawatts of new capacity with which to tackle heat waves and temper price spikes.<\/p>\n

Deep-red Texas offers lessons for the liberal states that have committed to lofty climate goals yet failed to build much solar or batteries so far. They can\u2019t immediately switch over to an ERCOT-style market, but they can take steps to speed up the time it takes to get permits and grid connection, dial back the level of deference to habitually conservative legacy utilities, and make sure that clean energy gets a\u00a0fair shot in the race to serve surging energy needs. And it\u2019s always a\u00a0good time to reexamine old market rules that subtly privilege entrenched players at the expense of new entrants that would make cheaper and cleaner power.<\/p>\n

After more of the rapid-fire solar buildout,\u00a0EIA\u00a0expects\u00a0ERCOT\u00a0will produce\u00a099\u00a0billion kilowatt-hours of solar power in\u00a02027, up\u00a027 percent from\u00a02026. At that point, the upstart industry will have left its well-established coal competition in the\u00a0dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published by Canary Media\u00a0and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1872,192,79,251257],"class_list":["post-663503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-syndicated"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}