Solar Surpassed Coal in U.S. Electricity Generation Last Month

U.S. consumers than coal last month and became the third-largest electricity source in the country, according to a Wednesday report from energy think tank Ember. S.

Electricity-generation statistics were released days after President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and other tools to provide $700 million to support the coal industry. The funding was intended to reduce energy prices that had spiked because of the war in Iran. S.

Electricity system,” Nicolas Fulghum, Senior Data Analyst at Ember, said. S. 8 percent last month.

Coal generated its smallest share of national power on record in April. Solar’s growth has been supported in part by government incentives.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated Biden-era subsidies for green energy. President Donald Trump referred to those subsidies as a “giant SCAM” in a June 2025 post on Truth Social. Various state governments continue to offer tax credits for businesses and homeowners who install solar panels.

The Biden administration allocated more than $7 billion to solar generation capacity through the “Solar for All” initiative. That program, announced in April 2024, aimed to bring solar to more than 900,000 low-income households nationwide. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency moved to cancel the grants in August 2025.

Only $53 million of the $7 billion budget had been spent by that time. S. His energy secretary, Chris Wright, is pushing ahead on a project to build a coal export terminal on a former military site in Oakland, California.

The West Gateway Terminal would provide the capacity to ship more than 12 million tons of American coal to the Asian market, though the project is expected to face legal challenges.