Our changing generation mix

As an online editor, I handle stories every day of new wind farms going up or some local dignitaries pulling the switch for a new solar energy project. You read stories that use phrases like "dash for gas" or "war on coal," but absorbing stuff like this day by day has a way of numbing you to the big picture.

The big picture is that things are changing in a big way. I realized recently that the way I think about the generation mix in the U.S. is seriously out of date. I did a mental check. "OK, so natural gas is about 25 percent, nuclear is a steady 20 percent, coal is like half at least, right?"

Wrong.

New data from FERC shows the picture is changing drastically. Especially natural gas, coal and renewables. Wind and solar — which used to be relegated to a tiny sliver of the pie, or else an asterisk or an "other" — are contributing more than 5 percent of the total generation mix of the country.

Even more surprising perhaps is coal, which has fallen to less than 30 percent of the pie. What's replacing it, largely, is natural gas, which is now 42.37 percent of the mix.

Certainly I knew that coal-fired power plants were retiring. I hadn't missed those announcements. Indeed, sometimes it felt like the only coal stories I ever filed were those concerning coal power plants shutting down or switching to natural gas.

Nuclear, known for its reliability, is sticking at a steady 20 percent. However, given the potential of small modular reactors and the NRC granting new licenses, even just a few new projects going online could change that figure in the future.

Even unexpected generation technologies, like geothermal energy, seems to be showing some growth with more than 147 MW of new capacity being brought online last year — an increase of 5 percent from 2011.

I first started to notice this when FERC released a recap of the power generation that came online in 2012. Half of that new generation had been renewable energy. Some analysts I spoke to at the time considered this a fluke. They said there was no way that this could sustain itself. But FERC keeps reporting the data, and if anything the numbers look like this trend is speeding up. Coal is out, natural gas and renewables are in.

Things are changing in statistically significant ways. When you watch it every day, like energy experts tend to do, sometimes you can lose track of just how fast it's moving.