Chart: Solar is finally bigger than coal in Texas

Texas just hit a huge milestone: It got more electricity from solar than it did from coal last year, a first for the second-biggest state in the country.

That’s a big shift from a few years prior. Back in 2020, the Texas grid got just 2% of its electricity from solar power and 18% from coal, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the grid for the vast majority of the state. In 2025, nearly 14% of ERCOT’s electricity came from solar — and just under 13% was produced by burning coal.

Texas, long a leader on wind energy, has been building solar at a blistering pace in recent years. It’s now the state with the most utility-scale solar capacity, beating out longtime champion California for the top spot.

It makes sense that solar has taken off in Texas. Two things it has in spades are sunshine and land, and ERCOT’s competitive markets and fast interconnection processes are appealing to solar developers. In recent years, the state’s solar boom helped create one of the nation’s hottest markets for grid batteries, which in turn has strengthened the business case for installing even more solar.

Meanwhile, coal has been declining in Texas for more than a decade, knocked off balance first by a combination of fracked gas and cheap wind power.

Overall, however, fossil fuels still produce the majority of Texas’s electricity. The state got 54% of its power last year from coal and gas, with the latter fuel serving as Texas’ biggest source of electricity by a long shot.

It’s worth noting that solar beat out coal in what was a comeback year for the fossil fuel, in Texas and beyond. After two years of declines, coal generation jumped by 8% in Texas in 2025. But because solar grew so fast — by a staggering 41% last year — the clean-energy source eclipsed coal anyway.

Not everyone in Texas is happy about the rising tide of solar.

Some state Republicans have tried and failed, several times now, to limit the growth of clean energy. Instead, they’d like to see the construction of natural gas plants to meet the state’s surging electricity demand. But Texas faces the same reality as the rest of the country: Solar and storage are simply too cheap and easy to deny.

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