Wind was responsible for 4.8 percent of America’s electricity used in January. That’s the highest January total ever, breaking the record from last January, which broke the record for the January before that, and so on. The chart below shows the latest data from the U.S. Energy Information Association.
America’s rising wind power feels unstoppable. That’s because in many areas of the country wind has reached an important tipping point: becoming cheaper than coal and natural gas. In fact, states getting the most electricity from wind include gas-rich Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Onshore wind power has come of age, and not just in the U.S. This next chart shows the levelized cost of energy worldwide, using data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Average onshore wind power now costs the same as gas worldwide, at about $84 per megawatt hour. That’s without subsidies.
In the U.S., competition between wind and gas is fierce. New techniques known as fracking (or hydraulic fracturing for the timid) have overhauled the U.S. energy economy and brought America some of the cheapest natural gas prices in the world. In order to compete, U.S. wind relied on a tax credit, which expired at the end of last year
— source bloomberg.com