"Texas Leads Nation in Both Wind And Natural Gas Power Growth"

"Texas is leading the nation by far in the growth of new power generation from both wind and natural gas as more states continue to retire their coal-fired power plants.

Texas accounted for more than one-third of the new wind and natural gas-fired power added to the nation’s electric grid this year through September. But all of the nation’s growth in wind, solar and gas power only offsets the loss of coal power, according to a new report Tuesday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The national grid this year saw the addition of 5,000 new megawatts of power from gas-fired plants, 4,000 megawatts from wind farms and about 1,500 megawatts from the burgeoning solar industry, but the U.S. lost a whopping nearly 11,000 megawatts from coal plant retirements, according to the report. The coal industry is suffering from a combination of new regulations on emissions and from the cheap price of natural gas that has placed coal at an economic disadvantage."
 
Jordan Blum reports for FuelFix December 15, 2015.