Coal Use Rises as Renewables Fall in U.S. Electricity Generation
By Ron Patterson
Oil Price.com
WASHINGTON, DC (October 3, 2018) – EIA released the latest edition of their Electric Power Monthly on September 25th, with data for July 2018. The table above shows the percentage contribution of the main fuel sources to two decimal places for the last two months and the year to date.
For the month of July, the total amount of electricity generated was the second highest amount generated for any single month since January 2013 at 410,148 GWh, 2,302 GWh less than the amount generated in July 2016. Coal and Natural Gas fueled almost 68.5 percent of US electricity generation in July and while the contribution from Coal increased from 27.36 percent in June to 28.18 percent in July, the contribution from Natural Gas also increased by slightly more than five percentage points, reaching an unprecedented 40.28 percent up from 35.02 percent in June. Nuclear power generated 72,456 GWh, 3.97 percent more than it did in June but, due to the increase in total generation, the percentage contribution to the total actually declined to 17.67 percent from 18.77 percent in June.