Renewable energy outpaced natural gas as the new additions to the power grid in the United States. It marks the fourth time that renewables outpaced natural gas as the new additions in the United States which is made up of a combination of wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro.  The data was reported from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ( FERC) in 2017 which showed that a total of 12, 270 Megawatts of new energy came from renewable sources. Most of the energy came from Solar and Wind.

Last year was one of the fastest adoption rates for renewable energy ever, with about half of the added power coming from green sources. The U.S energy showed the development of the renewables which are on the rise and fossil fuel being on the decline. The United States is still mainly powered by coal plants and with the support of the current administration behind fossil fuel, it will terminate the industry. Almost all of the power plants shut down last year used fossil fuels as their source of energy. The Energy Information Administration has reported that power companies plan to retire nearly ten gigawatts of coal power in 2018. Coal and natural gas should be declining in the United States. Jennie Jorgenson who is one of the authors of a 2017 study on wind curtailment from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory wrote a report based on wind energy. Researchers from NREL modeled a scenario in which wind energy provided 37 percent of the needed electricity in the Western United States. Solar power in the state is growing quickly, projected to grow by nearly 5,000 megawatts in the next five years.

Nearly half of all new, large scale electric power generation installed last year use renewable energy sources. A total of 25 gigawatts of capacity was installed last year, and about 12 gigawatts of that amount came from clean energy. Researchers have tried to improve the curtailment which occurs when the renewable energy supply is so great that the supply exceeds the capacity of the transmission lines that carry electricity from a power plant to your outlets.