Justin Fox, Columnist

U.S. Electricity Is Shifting, But Not Exactly Going Green

Renewables topped coal in electricity generation for the first time in April, but they still have a long way to go to catch natural gas.

June 26, 2019 at 4:49 PM UTC

By Justin Fox

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Rising and rising.
Photographer: Norm Betts/Bloomberg

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The amount of electricity generated by renewable energy sources in the U.S. topped the amount generated by coal for the first time in April, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced today, by a margin of 68.5 gigawatt-hours to 60.1.

The EIA’s renewables total includes geothermal and biomass, which may not exactly be the first things that come to mind when one contemplates the rise of renewable energy. But sum up just the big three of hydroelectric, wind and solar, and they handily beat coal in April, too.