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Welcome back to Current Climate. Rising demands for power from data centers and the electrification of everything, exacerbated by the spike in crude oil prices arising from the war in Iran, have pushed up utility bills for months but also brought a surge in large-scale solar installation. In fact, solar jumped ahead of coal for the first time as a source of U.S. electricity generation in May.

During the month, utility-scale solar generated 12.8% of the country’s electricity, while coal-fired plants dropped to just 12.2%, near their lowest ever, according to data compiled by energy think tank Ember. It’s a remarkable change given that coal was about 20% of U.S. power generation in May 2021, while solar was only 5.4% at that time. Its share should widen further as new projects like New Mexico’s 3.7-gigawatt SunZia wind farm that opened last week, the country’s biggest, come online.

The solar boom is accelerating, despite Trump administration efforts to kill federal clean power incentives and pivot back to coal and carbon-based energy, because of the rapid growth in large battery energy storage systems that let utilities maintain steady supplies of renewable electricity. As a result, installations of solar and battery storage accounted for over 90% of all new power added to the U.S. grid in the first quarter of 2026, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Nowhere is solar’s rise more apparent than in California. While solar topped coal nationally last month, in the Golden State, it’s overtaken natural gas, the top U.S. power source, so far this year, based on Energy Information Administration data.

“Solar electricity generation in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) over the first five months of 2026 increased 21% compared with the same period in 2024, and natural gas generation decreased by 60%,” the EIA report said. “In CAISO, utility-scale solar generated more electricity than natural gas on a daily basis on 82% of days in the first five months of 2026, up from 21% in 2024 and........

© Forbes