Solar energy, criticized by Trump, affirms a great gain of the United States in 2024

The US Electricity Network added more capacity of solar energy in 2024 than from any other source in a single year in more than two decades, according to a new industry report published Tuesday.

The data were published a day after the new Secretary of Energy of the United States, Chris Wright, strongly criticized solar and wind energy on two fronts. He said Monday at the beginning of Ceraweek for S&P Global, an annual energy conference in Houston, that they could not meet the world's growing electricity needs and that their use increased energy costs.

The report, produced by the Association of Solar Energy Industries and Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, said approximately 50 gigawatts of new solar generation capacity were added last year, much more than any other source of electricity.

Wright and President Trump have been very critical of renewable energy, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. defended as a way of addressing climate change. The Secretary of Energy, Mr. Trump and the Republicans in Congress have pledged to undo many of Mr. Biden's climatic and energy policies.

“Beyond the obvious problems of scale and costs, there is simply a physical form of wind, solar energy and batteries could replace the innumerable uses of natural gas,” said Wright, who was previously executive director of an oil and gas production company.

However, solar energy and battery storage systems seem to have a significant impulse and may not be easily frustrated. The United States Energy Information Administration, which is part of the Wright department, said last month that I expected solar energy and batteries to continue conducting New capacity facilities In US electrical networks this year.

Clean energy defenders celebrated the milestone of solar energy as the world moves to increase the production of electricity to meet the needs of hungry data centers to support the growth of artificial intelligence.

“There is a wild agreement that to do that, we have to have enough electricity, and there are facts that show that the fastest way to do so and the cheapest way to do so is through the deployment of solar and storage,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and executive director of the Solar Association in a Ceraweek interview.

In a discussion panel, the leader of one of the largest public service companies recognized the capacity of solar energy to offer a new generation of electricity quickly and economically.

“Renewable energies are ready to work at this time because they have been in operation,” said John Ketchum, president and executive director of Nextera Energy, the largest American renewable energy producer and the parent company of Florida Power & Light, a utility that has energy plants that burn natural gas.

But Wright said that the growing use of solar and wind energy increased the cost of electricity, which has constantly increased in recent years. Part of that increase has due to the strong jump in the costs of oil and natural gas after the invasion of Ukraine in Ukraine of Russia in Russia and updates to the networks that experts say that public services had postponed for many years.

“Wind and solar energy, the beloved of the last administration and much of the world today, supply approximately 3 percent of world primary energy,” Wright said. “Everywhere, wind and solar penetration has increased significantly, network prices increased and the stability of the network decreased.”

Electricity rates throughout the country reached their highest levels in 2024, increasing an average of 4 percent nationwide to $ 162.60 per month in December for the typical use of 1,000 kilowatts of use, compared to $ 156.90 per year before, according to the Last federal data.

Even as prices increase, the demand for electricity is expected to increase dramatically. Mr. Ketchum projected a 55 percent increase in the demand for electricity in the next 20 years, almost a fifth of that related to the growth of data centers, to the manufacture and industrial growth that represent much of the rest.

Given the projections for the increase in the demand for electricity, energy experts said that governments should focus on affordability, reliability and safety of national and global energy without losing sight of concerns about climate change.

“There will be blows along the way,” said Ernest Moniz, who was secretary of Energy in the administration of Obama, in a Ceraweek discussion panel. “We are moving to this low carbon future.”