Wind was responsible for 4.8 percent of America’s electricity used in January, Bloomberg reported in April. That was the highest January total ever, breaking the record from the previous January, which broke the record for the January before that, and so on.
America’s rising level of wind power feels unstoppable, Bloomberg adds, 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.
In order to compete with cheap gas, U.S. wind relied on a tax credit, which expired at the end of last year. But even without the subsidy, wind prices are getting cheaper as the technology improves, Bloomberg notes. The cost of wind energy has declined by 43 percent over the last four years. There’s a backlog of projects that already qualified for the tax credit that will ensure a steady pace of turbine growth for the next few years, according to BNEF wind analyst Amy Grace.