Factsheets

While energy is essential to modern society, most primary sources are non-renewable. The current fuel mix causes multiple environmental impacts, including climate change, acid rain, freshwater depletion, hazardous air pollution, and radioactive waste. Renewable energy can meet demand with a much smaller environmental footprint and improve energy security and other issues through distributed and diversified energy infrastructure.

• 82% of U.S. energy comes from fossil fuels, 8.2% from nuclear, and 9.1% from renewable sources. In 2023, renewables surpassed coal in energy generation.¹
• Wind and solar are the fastest growing renewable sources, but contribute <3.1% of total energy used in the U.S.¹ Wind and solar are used for electricity generation, while renewable biofuels are mostly used for transportation.
• The U.S. has an estimated 463,400 TWh of renewable energy technical potential—over 100 times the electricity consumed in 2020—but less than 1% of this is utilized.²
• Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), the cost of electricity from a given power plant, remains lower for utility-scale solar and onshore wind than fossil fuels through 2025, despite slight increases in renewable LCOE during 2023 and 2024.³

Major Renewable Sources

Wind (See Wind Energy Factsheet)

• U.S. onshore wind resources have 9,124 GW of potential capacity,⁵ and 154 GW currently installed.⁶ Offshore wind resources have 4,249 GW of potential,⁷ with 174 MW installed.⁸
• Global wind additions matched a record 117 GW in 2024, totaling 1,136 GW. The U.S. and Germany both added 5% of China’s annual additions.⁶
• U.S. wind installations dropped to 4 GW in 2024, the lowest since 2013.⁶
• Based on the average U.S. electricity fuel mix, a 1.76 MW wind turbine (U.S. average size in 2023) displaces 3,300 t of CO2 emissions per year.⁹

Solar (See Solar PV Energy Factsheet)

• Solar technology generated 6.7% of U.S. electricity in 2025.¹ Solar capacity reached 287.7 GW nationwide: enough to power over 48M houses.¹¹
• Solar PV uses 3.2% of the land as corn ethanol does to produce the same amount of energy.¹⁰
• The U.S. has 3.2 GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity.¹²
• In 2025, a new U.S. solar project was installed every 59 seconds.¹²
• Solar and storage represented 91% of new capacity in the first quarter of 2026.¹³
• 481.3 GW of new solar capacity is estimated to be installed by 2035.¹²
• The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided a 30% Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit of 2.75¢/kWh for qualified solar systems through 2027.^14,15

Biomass (See Biofuels Factsheet)

• Biomass is derived from plant materials, including agriculture residues, forest resources, purpose-grown energy crops, urban wood waste, and food waste, that can be converted into fuels, energy, or chemicals.¹⁷
• In 2025, 39% of U.S. biomass energy use was from wood, mostly as pulp, paper, and paperboard industry waste products. Municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge, and agricultural byproducts and other biomass, supplied an additional 7%.¹
• Biomass has low net CO2 emissions compared to fossil fuels. At combustion, it releases CO2 it pulled from the atmosphere to grow. Emissions are associated with processing, and  biomass can have high land use intensity. Willow biomass requires 121 acres of land to generate 1 GWh of electricity per year, higher than other renewable energy sources.¹⁸
• U.S. ethanol production is projected to decrease 1.9% annually from 2025 to 2050.¹⁹

Hydroelectric

• U.S. electricity generation from conventional hydropower peaked at 356 TWh in 1997, representing 10.2% of net electricity generation.²⁰ Conventional hydropower produced 247 TWh in 2025, accounting for 5.6% of U.S. net electricity generation.¹
• Hydroelectricity is virtually emission-free, but CH₄ and CO₂ are emitted from decomposition of vegetation in reservoirs.²¹ Decomposition in hydroelectric reservoirs has been estimated globally at 312 - 936 Mt CO2e per year.²² The U.S. has been decommissioning small dams.²²
• Other environmental concerns include fish mortality, habitat degradation, and water quality impairment. “Fish-friendly” turbines and smaller dams mitigate some of these problems.²³

Geothermal (See Geothermal Energy Factsheet)

• Hydrothermal resources (steam and hot water reservoirs) provide geothermal energy for electricity generation, primarily in California and Nevada.⁴⁰ Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) can be used almost anywhere to extract heat from shallow ground.¹⁸
• GSHPs have the potential to provide heating and cooling for 28M households by 2050.²⁵
• As of 2022, the U.S. has over 23 geothermal district heating and cooling systems that supply buildings and industries through a local distribution network,²⁶ with the economic potential for 17,500 systems by 2050.²⁵
• The U.S. led the world in geothermal electricity capacity in 2025 with 4 GW installed, 24% of the global total.⁴⁰ U.S. geothermal electricity generation is projected to reach 56 TWh by 2050, up from 16 TWh in 2025.^1,27

Advancing Renewable Energy

• Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and voluntary markets support 351 TWh and 319 TWh, respectively.²⁸ Voluntary markets comprise 8% of retail electricity sales and are used by 1 in 17 customers. See U.S. Energy System Factsheet for a U.S. map of these policies by state.
• State governments also provide renewable energy incentives including rebate, grant, and loan programs; building energy and permitting standards; corporate tax deductions, property tax incentives, personal tax credits, and sales tax exemptions; and feed-in tariff (FIT), net metering, and property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs. Check the DSIRE database or contact your state energy agency to access these benefits.²⁹
• Net metering—offered in 27 states, D.C., and 4 territories—allows customers to sell excess electricity back to the grid.³⁰ Some states are changing rate structures to credit solar energy producers differently.³¹
• Feed-in tariffs (FIT) set minimum prices per kWh that utilities must pay renewable electricity generators.³² As of 2026, three states (CA, NY, and IN) have a FIT.³³
• The Farm Bill’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) funded grants and loan guarantees for agricultural producers and rural small businesses to install renewable energy systems,³⁴ until it was suspended by a recent executive order.³⁵
• PACE programs allow property owners to finance solar installations through voluntary property tax assessments.⁴¹ There are residential PACE programs in three states (CA, MO, and FL).³⁶ Commercial PACE programs are active in 40 states.³⁶ Green banks—public, quasi-public, or nonprofit financing entities—leverage capital to support clean energy projects.37 As of 2026, there were 54 green banks in 44 states.³⁸