Red states leading the US in solar and wind production, new report shows

A new report by Climate Central shows how US capacity to generate renewable energy shot up last year – and surprisingly, red states lead the nation in solar and wind power production.

National wind and solar capacity grew 16% compared to 2021. All told, renewables generated enough electricity to power 64m American households. The report comes as the Biden administration starts to make billions of dollars available for renewable energy projects. The administration has committed to decarbonizing the grid completely by 2030 and getting the US to net zero emissions by mid-century.

“We are moving closer to the goals we need to reach in order to hit net zero,” said Jennifer Brady, a senior data analyst at Climate Central. “We have a free natural resource in the form of weather that can be captured to generate power.”

Climate action has often been stymied at the local and federal levels by Republican leaders. But the new report shows Iowa and Oklahoma – all of which have Republican governors and majority Republican state legislatures – led the nation in wind power production, while California and Florida were the largest producers of solar power. Texas is a leader in both solar and wind power.

“It’s good to have a national distribution of renewable energy, and seeing states building them up is a positive thing,” said Brady. The growth of renewable energy capacity in these states show the effectiveness of state and federal incentives.

There are several reasons why wind energy has grown by leaps in Texas. The state has been proactive in building out transmission lines to bring wind power to businesses and homes, which means future wind farms can easily connect to this grid. These investments allow the state to take advantage of its natural renewable resources.

Laws deregulating the energy market in Texas have also been conducive to leasing land for wind turbines; only 2% of the land in Texas is regulated by the federal government.

“Texas is rich in wind speed and rich in sun,” said Irfan Khan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M. “While there is a lot of initial investment, after the wind turbines are erected, the cost of wind is cheaper.”

In the past five years, the share of wind energy more than doubled from 15% to 34%. Over that same time, gas production has fallen from 49% to 34%.

“Texas is a big oil and gas producing state, but I think that wind is being recognized as another opportunity for generating energy that can be a revenue source,” said Eric Larson, a senior research engineer at Princeton University.

Elsewhere, state and federal incentives were a major driver for the year-over-year growth in renewable energy generation. In 2018, California mandated that most new single-family and multi-family homes up to three stories must include rooftop solar panels starting in 2020. In 2005, Iowa enacted the highest state tax credit rate for energy generated from wind, at $0.015 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). It is also the only state where the credits are transferable, meaning that tax credit recipients may sell the credit to third parties who can then use the purchased credit to offset their own Iowa taxes.

The US generated 683,130 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity from solar and wind last year, according to Climate Central’s findings, up from 588,471 GWh in 2021. The report shows that solar generation is understandably highest in the summer, while wind energy peaks in spring and fall.

Experts agree that the biggest step to increase wind and solar capacity is building more transmission lines.

“It’s extremely important to build transmission lines, because there is more wind energy generation than could be connected to the grid,” Khan said. Wind turbines and solar farms are generally built in rural areas far from where the highest electricity needs are, and require transmission lines in order to supply municipalities with power. “Currently the grid cannot handle all the renewable energy that already exists in Texas, and if we do not have transmission lines to support the renewable energy that feeds to the grid then it’s useless.”

As of 2021, there were over 8,100 projects across the US seeking approval to connect to the grid that already operates at capacity. More than 90% of these energy projects in the queue to be connected to the grid are for wind, solar and battery storage. While the Inflation Reduction Act includes $2bn dollars for transmission facility financing, the backlog of wind and solar projects is delaying the switch to renewables that is urgently needed. Some states and local municipalities are implementing microgrids to protect against regional grid outages that have occurred with increasing frequency due to weather disasters and ageing infrastructure.

“They’re smaller than the grid and therefore more agile,” said Brady. “A town may create a microgrid that’s more used for backup and be switched on if they need emergency power. But that may be a quicker way to get some of these renewables online.”