Electricity in the U.S.

The fuel sources that keep the lights on in the U.S. are diverse, but dominated by natural gas (32%), coal (30%), and nuclear power (20%) with hydroelectric (7.5%) and wind (6%) the next largest sources.

Go ahead, don't be shy, explore data from the EPA's eGrid database in this figure below.

How to use this chart: you can click and drag on the two scatter plots and draw a box to select plants; drag those selections around the plot to select other regions; click outside the selection on the plot to deselect; or hover over any point to see information about individual plants.

You can immediately see that the coal plants emit the greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) at the highest rates and those plants tend to be further from the coast. Natural gas, the now-dominant source of electricity generated in the U.S. since the hydraulic fracking boom, has its largest plants along coastal regions and especially the northeast and Gulf Coast, with smaller, peaker natural gas plants scattered throughout the U.S. These plants are about half as greenhouse gas emissive as coal, and the larger plants tend to have significantly lower levels of SO2 and NOx. Nuclear generation is much more prevelant in the Eastern half of the U.S. and Hawaii, being a small island system, is heavily reliant on oil, which has been eliminated from the generation mix of most of the mainland.

As far as renewables go, wind is most widely found in the middle of the country stretching from west-Texas to the Iowa and the Dakotas, while hydroelectric is most prevalent in the west. While renewable power generation is growing (including solar), there is still much work to be done in reducing emissions. Switching away from coal and to natural gas and nuclear as interim fuels is one pathway, as renewables continue to expand and energy storage to assist with their long-term integration also continues to develop and fall in price.

A few years ago it would have been hard to believe that any single fuel would come to dominate coal in the U.S., but that goes to demonstrate that change is possible and hopefully the momentum towards cleaner, affordable, reliable electricity access to all continues.

Data/Visualization Notes: The data here are from 2016. The 2,999 plants plotted here represent 95% of the generation capacity in the U.S. in 2016 - plants are all over 56.7MW in size. Small plants were not included to facilitate plot interactivity. Plot values that are beyond the edges of the axes are clamped to the edge of the axis so they can still be seen, but are not selectable on that plot (since their values are technically beyond the plotting limits).