Amid a historic economic contraction, renewable resources grew to account for a fifth of electricity produced in 2020, according to newly released data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, a coalition of clean energy, utility and natural gas companies.
Record-breaking wind and solar additions brought zero-carbon resources — which also include hydro and nuclear — to 40 percent of the 2020 electricity mix in the United States. Analysts heralded the growth as an indicator of the sectors’ resilience, in contrast to continued declines in coal power and the first drop in natural gas demand since the Great Recession in 2009.
