06/25/2026
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America is building more new power plants in 2026 than it has in any single year in its entire history — and nearly every single one of them is clean. According to the US Energy Information Administration, the United States is set to add 86 gigawatts of new electricity generating capacity in 2026, more than the country has ever built in a single calendar year. Solar alone will provide 51 percent of that record new capacity. Batteries will deliver 28 percent. Wind will add another 14 percent. Natural gas, the fossil fuel most actively supported by the Trump administration, accounts for just 7 percent of new capacity. Coal, the other fossil fuel the White House has pledged to revive, does not appear anywhere in the list of power plants currently under construction.
The numbers reveal a disconnect between political rhetoric and economic reality that the energy industry has stopped trying to reconcile publicly. While the Trump administration has gutted decarbonization legislation, imposed tariffs on solar components, and directed federal funds toward coal, private capital is voting loudly in the opposite direction. Clean energy — driven overwhelmingly by pure economics rather than policy support — is consuming nearly all of a vastly expanded construction pipeline, while gas gets a scant sliver and coal gets nothing.
The United States built 33 gigawatts less in 2025, itself the biggest yearly power plant buildout since 2002. The 2026 figure makes that record look modest. Whatever political turbulence follows in the years ahead, America will face it with tens of gigawatts of brand-new solar panels, batteries, and wind turbines already generating electricity across the grid.
Source: Canary Media / US Energy Information Administration, 2026