Top biofuel statistics

• The US produced 16,514.8 million gallons of fuel ethanol in 2025, which was 80.1% of its combined ethanol and biomass-based diesel output.
• Biomass-based diesel, meaning biodiesel plus renewable diesel, fell 15.8% in 2025 to 4,097.1 million gallons after a record 4,865.7 million in 2024.
• The Alternative Fuels Data Center lists 4,784 E85 station locations as of October 29, 2026.
• Soybean oil supplied 33.3% of the fats and oils that plants making the two diesel fuels used in 2025.
• US ethanol exports ran at 1.96 billion gallons through November 2025, on pace for a record year, the Renewable Fuels Association reports.
• The International Energy Agency expects Brazil to supply 40% of the growth in road-transport biofuel demand to 2030.
• Corn ethanol’s emissions run from about 39% below gasoline in a 2019 USDA analysis to likely at least 24% above it in a 2022 study.
• Darling Ingredients reports that its Diamond Green Diesel joint venture sold 348.8 million gallons of renewable fuels in the second quarter of 2026.

What is a biofuel, and is it renewable?

Biofuels are, in EIA’s wording, liquid fuels and blending components made from biomass, the organic material that comes from plants and animals. In the US that mostly means ethanol, which is made from corn starch in 94% of cases, plus biodiesel and renewable diesel made from fats and oils.

Is a biofuel renewable? EIA calls biomass renewable organic material, and it supplied about 5% of US primary energy in 2025. Biofuels were 53% of the biomass energy the US used that year, the largest slice of the wider biomass energy picture.

Whether a crop-based fuel counts as renewable in practice depends on regrowth keeping pace with harvest, which the page on biomass as a renewable resource works through. Renewable and low-carbon are separate questions, and the lifecycle estimates for corn ethanol further down span a wide range.

How much biofuel does the US make?

US ethanol production rose from 13,929.1 million gallons in 2011 to 16,514.8 million in 2025. Over the same years, renewable diesel grew from 62.0 million gallons to 2,946.2 million.

Source: EIA Monthly Energy Review Table 10.3, Table 10.4a and Table 10.4b, September 2026 edition, calendar years. The 2025 figures are preliminary.

Renewable diesel did the climbing, and the last row of the table shows both diesel fuels falling. Biodiesel dropped 31.1% to 1,150.9 million gallons. Renewable diesel’s fall was smaller, 7.8% to 2,946.2 million.

Through the first six months of 2026, plants made 8,314.6 million gallons of ethanol and 2,286.2 million gallons of biodiesel and renewable diesel combined. Those are half-year totals, so they don’t compare with the full years in the table. On the company side, Darling Ingredients reports that its Diamond Green Diesel joint venture sold 348.8 million gallons of renewable fuels in the second quarter of 2026.

EIA’s October 2026 outlook forecasts ethanol at 1.10 million barrels a day in 2026, up from 1.08 million in 2025. It has renewable diesel at 0.23 million barrels per day in 2026, up from 0.19 million.

The combined total, the ethanol share and the fall in biomass-based diesel are computed from EIA’s three fuel tables, so they cover those fuels and leave out EIA’s separate category for other biofuels. EIA revises annual figures as new months arrive, so the 2025 numbers can move.

How each fuel gets made

Ethanol is grain alcohol. Producers use yeast to ferment the starch or sugar in corn or sugarcane, distill the result up to fuel grade and add a denaturant so it can’t be sold as a beverage, as EIA explains. It’s the same basic biology as a distillery, aimed at your gas tank instead of a bottle.

Biodiesel takes a different chemical path, called transesterification. A producer mixes roughly 100 pounds of oil with 10 pounds of methanol and a catalyst such as sodium or potassium hydroxide. The reaction yields 100 pounds of biodiesel and 10 pounds of glycerin, according to the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center.

That glycerin isn’t waste. It’s sold into pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturing.

Renewable diesel skips transesterification. Refiners run the same fats and oils through hydrotreating, adding hydrogen under heat and pressure to strip out oxygen and produce what the industry calls hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids, or HEFA. The output is a hydrocarbon chain almost indistinguishable from petroleum diesel, so it meets ASTM D975, the petroleum diesel spec, instead of the separate ASTM D6751 standard written for biodiesel.

What feeds the vats and reactors

Corn is the main US ethanol feedstock, and ethanol and its by-products took 5,547 million bushels of it in the 2025/26 marketing year, about 33.7% of all US corn use by a share computed from USDA’s table. The figure includes by-products, so it overstates the corn that becomes fuel itself. USDA’s Economic Research Service projected in July 2026 that 5.55 billion bushels would be the second-largest amount on record.

The two diesel fuels draw on a wider menu of fats and oils. Soybean oil supplied 11,016 million pounds in 2025, or 33.3% of the total, down from 13,320 million pounds in 2024.

Source: EIA, Feedstocks Consumed for Production of Biofuels, release of September 30, 2026, calendar years. Shares are computed from EIA’s totals.

Tallow passed yellow grease in 2025, with 9,025 million pounds against 5,166 million. EIA’s table reports yellow grease and has no separate used cooking oil line.

USDA counts soybean oil on a different calendar. Its October 2026 WASDE has 14,800 million pounds going to biofuel in the 2025/26 marketing year, about 49% of domestic soybean oil use, on a year that runs October to September. USDA also expects the oil to average 64.08 cents a pound over the marketing year ending in September 2026, against 47.59 cents the year before.

Which countries make the most biofuel?

The US made 16,494 million gallons of fuel ethanol in 2025, 52% of a world total of 32,000 million, by the Renewable Fuels Association’s count.

Source: Renewable Fuels Association, Annual World Fuel Ethanol Production. RFA’s US figure differs from EIA’s.

Brazil, whose ethanol comes mostly from sugar cane, made less in 2025 than in 2024, while India’s output rose 41% to 2,600 million gallons. The IEA expects the US to remain the largest biofuel producer and consumer through 2030.

The two US counts differ slightly. EIA has 16,514.8 million gallons for 2025, which is 21 million more than RFA’s count. Neither source says why.

Gallons made and gallons burned at home differ too. US consumption was 14,340.7 million gallons in 2025, about 2,174 million below production. RFA reports exports on pace to pass 2 billion gallons that year.

How much of each you can put in a tank

Ethanol made 10.5% of US gasoline in 2025, and EIA’s June 2026 outlook expects 10.7% in 2026. The blend wall is the point at which fuel infrastructure and all vehicle engines would need updating to take more than E10.

Source: EIA, Ethanol and the blend wall, AFDC, Biodiesel blends and AFDC, Renewable diesel.

E15 is approved for model year 2001 and newer light-duty vehicles, so if your car is that age or newer, you can likely use it. E85 goes further, at 51% to 83% ethanol, but it needs a flex-fuel vehicle. AFDC lists 4,784 E85 station locations, 1,997 for biodiesel and 1,237 for renewable diesel as of October 29, 2026.

EPA issued the first nationwide fuel waiver for the 2026 summer on March 25, 2026, which let E15 be sold from June 1 to September 15. The House passed year-round E15 legislation on May 13, 2026, by 218 votes. The bill went to the Senate.

The most common biodiesel blends are B5 and B20, and many diesel engine makers approve B20, so check your warranty before you fill a diesel pickup with it. At the other end, renewable diesel faces no such ceiling, because AFDC says it can fully replace petroleum diesel or be blended in any amount.

The federal program that created this market

EPA finalized the 2026 and 2027 Renewable Fuel Standard volumes on March 27, 2026, setting total renewable fuel at 26.81 billion Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) for 2026 and 27.02 billion for 2027. Refiners and importers are the program’s obligated parties. They must retire enough RINs to meet an annual quota, and one RIN stands for one ethanol-equivalent gallon.

Source: EPA, Final Renewable Fuel Standards for 2026 and 2027. Reallocated volume is EPA’s 70 percent reallocation of small refinery exemptions granted for 2023 through 2025.

EPA set 2026 biomass-based diesel at 9.07 billion RINs and cellulosic biofuel at 1.36 billion, after partially waiving the 2025 cellulosic requirement for a production shortfall.

RINs aren’t gallons. A gallon of biodiesel generates 1.5 RINs and a gallon of ethanol generates 1.0. As of June 4, 2026, D4 RINs traded at $2.41 and D6 RINs at $2.37, both close to their all-time highs set in 2021.

California’s carbon math, and the credit that replaced it

California runs its own carbon pricing system on top of the federal one. Its Low Carbon Fuel Standard, or LCFS, tallies credits and deficits by the carbon intensity of each transportation fuel.

In the first quarter of 2026, CARB counted 6.93 million metric tons of credits against 9.77 million metric tons of deficits. The cumulative bank stood at 36.86 million metric tons, and regulated entities can still correct the quarterly figures.

A newer federal tax credit reshaped the incentive further. The Clean Fuel Production Credit, known as 45Z, replaced older, separate blender credits for biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel with one production credit for fuel made starting January 1, 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. It pays 20 cents a gallon at the base rate, and the law limits qualifying feedstock to North America.

The 2025 reconciliation law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, extended 45Z through 2029 and dropped indirect land-use-change emissions (ILUC) from the carbon scores, which lowers scores for corn ethanol and soy biodiesel by up to 20 to 25 grams of CO2-equivalent per megajoule, per the Clean Air Task Force.

Treasury proposed 45Z regulations on February 4, 2026, and IRS Notice 2026-53 on September 8, 2026 set the 2026 emissions rate table. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the credit will cost $25.7 billion through 2029, the Clean Air Task Force reports, against an original estimate near $2.9 billion.

Sustainable aviation fuel is next

Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is jet fuel that can be made through HEFA, the same hydrotreating process renewable diesel uses. EIA estimated US capacity at about 30,000 barrels a day in May 2025, counting only HEFA SAF.

Even at that pace, EIA expected SAF to stay under 2% of the 1.7 million barrels a day of US jet fuel in 2025 and near 2% in 2026. Your seat on a US flight is still burning almost entirely petroleum jet fuel.

Capacity built unevenly. Phillips 66 finished its 10,000-barrel-a-day Rodeo project in California in the third quarter of 2024 and then temporarily halted production in the fourth, while Diamond Green Diesel completed a 15,000-barrel-a-day unit at Port Arthur, Texas, in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The 2025 law cut the SAF credit from $1.75 a gallon to the same $1 cap that applies to other biofuels. EIA’s October 2026 outlook puts other biofuels, the category that holds SAF, at 0.04 million barrels per day in both 2025 and 2026.

Is biofuel better for the climate than gasoline?

Estimates of corn ethanol’s emissions against gasoline run from clearly better to likely worse, depending on what each study counts.

Source: EPA, Overview of the Renewable Fuel Standard. USDA, corn ethanol greenhouse gas analysis. Argonne National Laboratory, GREET model results. Lark and colleagues, PNAS.

The USDA and Argonne rows model the average life cycle of a gallon of ethanol, and Argonne presented its figure at an industry conference. The PNAS paper estimates what the policy changed on the ground instead. It found the RFS raised corn prices by 30% and added 2.1 million hectares of cropland between 2008 and 2016, and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center summarizes its conclusion that corn ethanol failed to meet the policy’s own greenhouse gas emissions targets.

EPA’s third triennial report to Congress found that the RFS had a modest positive effect on biofuel production and so a modest negative effect on the environment. Both diesel fuels face a tougher test than corn ethanol, because the RFS requires a 50% lifecycle cut from them.

Your grocery bill and your gas tank pull from the same soybean field

Soybean oil goes into both tanks and kitchens, and USDA’s October 2026 WASDE puts the biofuel share of domestic use near half. The American Soybean Association put the 2024 record for US biomass-based diesel production at 4.86 billion gallons. It calculates actual 2026 use at 5.86 billion gallons once backfill and exemptions are counted, with 5.66 billion gallons from US plants.

The 5.86 billion is use, not production, and the analysis predates EPA’s final rule.

Whether farmland pushed into fuel crops adds carbon is the same accounting debate that surrounds whether biomass is carbon neutral. The clean fuel credit described above leaves indirect land-use change out of its scoring.

At the grocery store, USDA’s Economic Research Service forecasts food-at-home prices up 2.3% in 2026 in its October 23, 2026 update, with prices for fats and oils below 2025’s. At the pump, the blend table above lists which vehicles can take each fuel, and your owner’s manual settles the rest.

The figures below come mostly from the IPCC, Ember, IRENA and the Global Carbon Project and describe 2025 unless a line says otherwise.

Top statistics on stopping global warming

• Carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa averaged 426.07 ppm in September 2026, up from 424.37 ppm in September 2025.
• Global fossil CO2 emissions rose 1.0% in 2025 to a record 38.1 billion tonnes.
• Wind and solar supplied 17.3% of the world’s electricity in 2025, up from 4.5% in 2015.
• Renewables overtook coal in global electricity generation in 2025, 33.8% to 33.0%.
• The world installed a record 664 GW of solar in 2025, counted in direct current.
• Electric cars made up about 1 in 4 new cars sold worldwide in 2025, with more than 20 million sold.
• Direct carbon pricing covered over 29% of global emissions in the World Bank’s May 2026 report.
• Climate Action Tracker’s November 2025 update puts warming under current policies at about 2.6°C by the end of the century.
• Newer carbon removal methods take out only 0.002 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, according to the 2026 State of CDR report.

How fast do emissions have to fall?

In the IPCC’s 1.5°C pathways, global greenhouse gas emissions fall 60% below 2019 levels by 2035 and 84% by 2050. The 2°C pathways cut more slowly and reach net zero CO2 in the early 2070s.

Source: IPCC, AR6 Synthesis Report, Longer Report (2023). The figures are cuts in net global greenhouse gas emissions, with the IPCC’s ranges in parentheses. The 1.5°C pathways have a better than 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot, and the 2°C pathways a better than 67% chance of limiting it to 2°C.

UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025 puts the cut needed by 2035 on a 1.5°C path at 55% below 2019 levels. For a 2°C path it’s 35%, and both sit inside the IPCC’s ranges.

ECMWF’s ERA5 data show that 2023 to 2025 averaged more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the first three-year span to do so. The Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit refers to long-term warming, which ECMWF estimates at around 1.4°C. The gases and activities behind that warming are laid out in the causes of climate change.

The remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C is 170 billion tonnes of CO2 from the start of 2026, and the 2025 Global Carbon Budget report says current emissions would use it up before 2030.

Why do estimates of world emissions differ?

Three totals for world emissions get quoted often, and each one counts something different. The Global Carbon Budget counts only fossil CO2, which came to 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025 after netting out cement carbonation. The EU’s EDGAR database counts all greenhouse gases in CO2 equivalents without land use, which gives 54.1 billion tonnes for 2025, up 0.7% on 2024.

UNEP adds land-use change to the same set of gases and reports 57.7 billion tonnes for 2024, up 2.3% on 2023.

What would cut the most emissions by 2030?

The IPCC says mitigation options costing USD100 a tonne or less could cut global emissions by at least half of the 2019 level by 2030, and its chapter on mitigation potential puts the total at 38 billion tonnes of CO2e a year.

Source: IPCC, AR6 Working Group III, Chapter 12, Table 12.4 (2022). The potentials are for options costing under USD100 per tonne of CO2e, and the all-sector figure is net of overlap between sectors.

Electricity has the largest potential, and energy supply was also the biggest source of emissions in 2019, at 34% of the net total, with industry second at 24%. Forestry and other land use ranks second on the potential list, ahead of industry and agriculture.

Which single options cut the most for the least money?

Solar sits at the top of the IPCC’s list of single options, with a potential of 2.0 to 7.0 billion tonnes of CO2e a year in 2030, and wind comes next. Solar and wind are the two types of renewable energy on the list, and most of their potential costs less than zero.

Source: IPCC, AR6 Working Group III, Chapter 12, Table 12.3 (2022). A cost below zero means the option costs less over its lifetime than the technology it replaces, and the costs leave out the expense of integrating variable power into the grid. Ranges are shown where the IPCC gives one.

The IPCC shows these options as a chart in Figure SPM.7.

How fast are wind and solar growing?

In 2025, solar out-generated wind for the first time in the table below, with 2,778.6 TWh against 2,711.9 TWh.

Source: Ember, yearly electricity data (file updated September 2026).

Ember’s 2026 review found that wind and solar together met 99% of the growth in global electricity demand in 2025. SolarPower Europe, an industry group, says the global solar fleet passed 3 TW in 2025.

On the wind side, the trade body GWEC counted a record 165 GW of new wind capacity in 2025, 40% more than in 2024. A separate GWEC supply-side report, as covered by Baltic Wind, counts turbines when they’re mechanically installed and gives 178 GW for the same year. US numbers are on the page about wind power growth.

Is clean power cheaper than fossil power?

IRENA finds that the cost of solar PV has fallen 89% since 2010 and the cost of onshore wind 71%.

Source: IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2025 (2026). The figures are global weighted averages for projects commissioned in 2025, in 2025 dollars.

Onshore wind and solar PV sit at the cheap end of the table. These are the costs of building and running a plant, not the price on your power bill, and they leave out storage and the cost of connecting plants to the grid.

IRENA’s 2024 edition, as reported by Argus Media, put onshore wind at USD0.034 a kWh, 53% below the cheapest fossil option.

How do cars, homes and factories fit in?

A battery-electric car emits 73% less over its life cycle than a gasoline car in the EU, according to the ICCT’s 2025 update, and up to 78% less when it runs on renewable electricity. If you drive a typical US gasoline car, it emits 4.29 tonnes of CO2e a year.

The IEA’s May 2026 outlook, as reported by Electrek, expects 23 million electric cars to be sold in 2026, close to 30% of new cars worldwide.

In buildings, the IPCC’s chapter on the sector names the spread of heat pumps as the main driver of electricity use for heating. For industry, it calls net zero carbon dioxide emissions possible but challenging, and says material efficiency and circularity cut the need for primary production.

How much do methane and forests matter?

Methane made up 17.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025, by EDGAR’s count. It’s about 80 times as potent as CO2 per unit of mass over 20 years, and the Global Methane Pledge aims to cut methane at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.

Methane cuts at oil and gas operations and at coal mines both appear in the options table above. The page on methane leaking from oil and gas covers where the gas escapes.

On forests, the world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary forest in 2025, 36% less than in 2024, though the loss is still 46% higher than a decade earlier.

Can carbon removal fill the gap?

The world removes 2.2 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, about 5% of gross CO2 emissions, and 99.9% of that comes from conventional methods such as forests and soils. National pledges for CO2 removal fall short of the highest-ambition Paris-compatible scenarios by 1.2 billion tonnes a year in 2035 and 5.2 in 2050.

The Global CCS Institute counted 77 operating carbon capture projects in its October 2025 report, up 54% on the year. The page on how much carbon capture and storage captures gives the tonnes. Climeworks’ Mammoth plant in Iceland, which started up in May 2024, is designed to capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2 a year.

What are governments doing about emissions?

137 countries have net zero targets covering 74% of global emissions, as of October 2026, according to the Net Zero Tracker. The World Bank’s May 2026 report found that direct carbon pricing covers over 29% of global emissions, with revenues above USD107 billion in 2025. The page on how carbon pricing works covers the markets in the EU and California.

Climate Action Tracker’s November 2025 update puts current policies at about 2.6°C of warming by the end of the century and at about 2.2°C if governments deliver their binding long-term and net-zero targets. UNEP’s 2025 report projects 2.3 to 2.5°C if every national pledge is carried out and up to 2.8°C under current policies. The two groups model the outlook separately, so their current-policy figures differ.

China shows how a projection and a full-year count can differ. The Global Carbon Project’s November 2025 projection had China’s emissions up 0.4% in 2025, and CREA’s later analysis found they fell about 0.3%.

Which personal choices cut the most CO2?

Living car-free saves 2.4 tonnes of CO2e a year and a plant-based diet saves 0.8, according to Wynes and Nicholas’s 2017 study of developed-country lifestyles. Their paper found that commonly promoted strategies such as recycling are four times less effective than a plant-based diet.

A 2020 review of 53 studies by Ivanova and colleagues found that car-free living and an electric car each save a median of more than 1.7 tonnes per person a year, and so does cutting a long flight.

Source: Wynes and Nicholas (2017) and Ivanova et al. (2020), both published in Environmental Research Letters. The Wynes and Nicholas figures for the smaller actions are converted from kilograms in the paper’s Table 1, and the options aren’t additive.

Of the home options, renewable electricity saves a median 1.6 tonnes of CO2e per person a year and refurbishment 0.9. If your next big purchase is a car or a heating system, our pages on electric cars in the US and how a heat pump works cover what each one costs.

Top photo: Martin Pearman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top biomass renewable statistics

• EIA puts biomass at about 5% of all US energy consumed in 2025.
• In the Rocky Mountain region, high tree mortality left a growth-to-removals ratio of 0.74 in the Forest Service’s 2017 report.
• Modern bioenergy supplied 45% of the world’s renewable energy supply in 2024.
• Bioenergy plants made up 3.0% of the world’s installed renewable power capacity in 2025, a share computed from IRENA’s totals.
• Ember counts biomass at 2.24% of world electricity and 1.02% of US electricity in 2025.
• FAO reports deforestation of 10.9 million hectares a year in 2015 to 2025, down from 17.6 million a year in 1990 to 2000.
• Managed loblolly pine stands in the US South can reach sawtimber size in 25 to 40 years.

Is biomass renewable?

Biomass is renewable when new growth replaces what’s burned, which matches the IPCC’s definition of renewable energy as energy replenished by natural processes at least as fast as it’s used.

EIA describes biomass as renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals. The IPCC’s AR6 energy chapter lists bioenergy among renewable energy with wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and ocean power, the other types of renewable energy.

Ember counts bioenergy as renewable because forest and energy crops can be regrown and replenished, which isn’t true of burning fossil fuels. The plant and animal materials that count as biomass are covered in how biomass energy is used.

Is renewable the same as carbon neutral?

No. The IPCC defines carbon neutrality as a condition in which anthropogenic CO2 emissions are balanced by anthropogenic CO2 removals, which is a different test from whether a fuel replenishes.

EIA calls biomass a carbon-neutral energy source because its source plants take in nearly as much CO2 as burning releases. IPCC inventory rules report CO2 from biomass fuels in the land-use sector and leave it out of energy totals, and Ember adds that the lifecycle carbon intensity the IPCC reports for bioenergy is higher than for other renewables.

Whether regrowth offsets the carbon released by burning is the subject of our page on whether biomass counts as carbon neutral.

Who counts biomass as renewable?

EIA, the IPCC’s energy chapter, US law, North Carolina, the EU and Ember all count biomass as renewable, and the legal definitions add conditions about land, forests and lifecycle emissions.

Source: EIA, Renewable energy explained, IPCC AR6 WG3 glossary, IPCC AR6 WG3 chapter 6, EPA, Renewable Fuel Standard overview, 40 CFR 80.2, 42 USC 15852, North Carolina G.S. 62-133.8, European Commission, Biomass and Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026.

The US Renewable Fuel Standard counts planted crops and crop residue only from agricultural land cleared or cultivated before December 19, 2007, and planted trees only from non-federal tree plantations. It also requires lifecycle greenhouse gas cuts of 60% for cellulosic biofuel and 50% for advanced biofuel. Corn starch ethanol needs a cut of 20%.

Electricity works differently. EIA says no federal renewable portfolio standard exists, though a federal Renewable Fuel Standard oversees transportation fuels such as ethanol and other biofuels. Federal law on government electricity purchases defines renewable energy to include electric energy produced from biomass.

Your state may decide which biomass counts. EIA says many states specify the types of renewable energy and technologies that qualify, and North Carolina’s statute lists wood waste and energy crops as renewable energy resources.

The EU’s directive puts primary and old-growth forests, peatland and other no-go areas off limits for biomass that counts toward its renewable targets or receives subsidies.

How long does biomass take to regrow?

Energy grasses like miscanthus are harvested every year, and northern hardwood stands run on rotations of 50 to 120 years or more.

Source: Sanford et al., Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 2016, Forest Research (UK), Energy crops: Grasses, University of Arkansas Extension, loblolly pine and Minnesota DNR, northern hardwoods guidelines. The coppice figure is a UK harvest cycle and the pine and hardwood figures are US rotations.

Corn stover is the residue of an annual crop, while an unmanaged loblolly pine stand can take up to 50 years to reach sawtimber size, against 25 to 40 years under management.

Are US forests growing faster than they’re harvested?

The balance varies by region. In the North, net growth was 2.4 times removals, against 1.8 times in the South, while in the Rocky Mountains removals outran growth.

Source: USDA Forest Service Indicator 2.13 and Forest Resources of the United States 2017. Ratios describe inventories through 2016, and removals cover all harvest, whatever the wood is used for. The Pacific Coast value is the Forest Service’s “twice,” and the national ratio is computed from 25 and 13 billion cubic feet.

If the wood for a plant near you comes from the North or the South, the Forest Service count says growth in those regions outran removals from all uses, which tests the region and says nothing about that one plant.

In the Rocky Mountains the low ratio traces to tree mortality. Softwood mortality there doubled since 2006, from 1.2 to 2.4 billion cubic feet a year, and the Forest Service says removals in the region are among the lowest in the country.

How much of US renewable energy is biomass?

Biomass supplied 54.9% of US renewable energy in 2025, down from 81.9% in 1950, and the yearly table shows the share falling since 2010 as all renewables together grew faster than biomass.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review Table 1.3, annual values in quadrillion Btu. Shares are computed from EIA’s unrounded values, and 2025 is preliminary.

Biomass use peaked at 5.101 quads in 2024 and fell to 4.853 in 2025, on EIA’s preliminary count, while all renewables kept growing.

How much renewable energy is biomass worldwide?

Modern bioenergy supplied 45% of the world’s renewable energy supply in 2024. At your wall outlet it is a sliver, 1.02% of US electricity in 2025. The gap comes from what each yardstick counts, and from where.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review Table 1.3, IEA Bioenergy, Role of Bioenergy up to 2050, European Commission, Biomass, IRENA, Renewable Energy Statistics 2026 and Ember via Our World in Data. The IEA total of 64% adds its 45% and 19% shares, the EIA and IRENA shares are computed, and the EU figure is for 2021.

Capacity counts power plant size in megawatts, so it can’t be compared with energy supply in quads or electricity in kilowatt-hours. IRENA counts US bioenergy capacity falling from 12,903 MW in 2016 to 10,314 MW in 2025, so only compare rows that share a yardstick.

When does biomass stop being renewable?

Biomass stops being renewable when harvest outruns regrowth, and a 2015 study in Nature Climate Change estimated that 27% to 34% of the pan-tropics’ 2009 woodfuel harvest was unsustainable. The study notes that over half of all wood harvested worldwide is used as fuel, supplying about 9% of global primary energy.

FAO’s 2025 assessment puts net forest loss at 4.12 million hectares a year in 2015 to 2025, down from 10.7 million hectares a year in the 1990s. That is a net figure for all forest change, and it doesn’t single out wood burned for energy.

Crop residue has its own limit. USDA scientists say stover harvest has to avoid worsening soil erosion or degrading soil organic carbon, and at the roughly one third of study sites where they could estimate it, the minimum residue return rate was 3.9 megagrams of stover per hectare a year.

The IPCC’s AR6 energy chapter says growing dedicated bioenergy crops raises a broad set of sustainability concerns, which leaves the long-term role of bioenergy in low-carbon energy systems uncertain.

What wood does Drax source?

Drax Group sourced 9.74 million tonnes of wood fibre in 2025, and sawmill and other wood industry residues were 53.4% of it.

Source: Drax Group, ESG Performance Report 2025, group-wide fibre sourced. Shares are computed from those tonnes.

Thinnings and low-grade roundwood together were 40.6% of the fibre, a share computed from the same table.

In February 2025 the UK government agreed to cut Drax’s subsidies by 50% from 2027 to 2031, Power Technology reported, citing Reuters. Drax also committed to source all of its woody biomass from “sustainable origins.”

Where these numbers come from

Each share in the US history, yardstick and Drax tables is one sourced total divided by another, and the table’s source line says so. The 2025 US figures are EIA’s preliminary count, and the other figures cover different years, so read each against the year beside it.

What to ask before you accept that biomass is renewable

The European Commission is preparing its post-2030 renewable energy framework, with proposals scheduled by the end of 2026.

When someone tells you a biomass project is renewable, ask what the fuel is and which rule counts it. With those two answers you can tell whether the claim rests on a residue or on standing trees, and which clock in the regrowth table above applies.

Top hydropower statistics

• Hydro made 22.7% of US utility-scale renewable generation in 2025, worked out from EIA’s final figures.
• IHA counted 1,469 GW of hydropower worldwide at the end of 2025, with pumped storage above 200 GW.
• Hydro plants across the US ran at a 35.3% capacity factor in 2025, well below nuclear’s 91.0%.
• IRENA found that hydropower’s global weighted-average cost of electricity rose 9% to USD 62 per megawatt-hour in 2025.
• Paraguay made 99.47% of its electricity from hydro in 2025, and Ethiopia made 96.46%.
• Upgrades to existing plants drove most of the 2.1 GW that US conventional hydropower capacity grew between 2010 and 2022.
• Operators added 18.4 GW of renewable hydropower worldwide in 2025, and 96% of it was in China.
• Grand Coulee Dam in Washington has more than 6,809 MW of generating capacity, the largest hydropower complex in the US.

How does hydropower work and what types of plant are there?

A hydroelectric plant makes electricity when water runs down a pipe called a penstock and pushes against turbine blades, and the spinning turbine drives a generator.

Picture a fire hose aimed at a pinwheel. The more water flows and the higher it falls, a drop called the head, the more electricity a plant can make.

The Department of Energy sorts hydropower plants into three types, and the most common is the impoundment plant, which uses a dam to store river water in a reservoir. A diversion plant, also called run-of-river, channels part of a river through a canal or penstock and may not need a dam at all. The third type, pumped storage, uses two reservoirs at different heights and makes power as water moves down through a turbine.

DOE counts more than 90,000 dams in the US, and less than 3% of them produce power, so odds are the dam you drive past isn’t making electricity.

How much of US electricity comes from hydropower?

US conventional hydropower made 241.3 TWh of electricity in 2025, about 5.5% of utility-scale generation, in EIA’s final figures. EIA’s hydropower explainer shows 5.6% for 2025 on preliminary data, and the final figures replace it here.

Source: EIA Monthly Energy Review, Table 7.2a for 2001 to 2024, and EIA’s final Electric Power Annual for 2025, Table 3.1.A and Table 3.1.B. Wind and solar are utility-scale, and solar includes thermal. Each hydro share is computed from the total.

Hydro’s output in 2025 was 24.4% below its 2011 high of 319.4 TWh, the top year in the table, and the line zigzags from year to year.

Wind passed hydro in 2019, and solar’s 300.3 TWh in 2025 topped hydro’s 241.3 TWh. That puts hydro behind both wind and solar among the renewable sources that feed the US grid.

How much of the world’s electricity comes from hydropower?

World hydropower made 4,432.3 TWh in 2025, or 13.97% of global electricity, by Ember’s count. Our World in Data, which republishes Ember’s figures, shows hydro’s share of world electricity sliding from 16.3% in 2020 to 14.0% in 2025.

Ember’s review found output similar to 2024, with China up 45 TWh and India up 21 TWh after strong monsoon rainfall. Output fell 25 TWh in Brazil and 43 TWh in the EU, where Ember says alpine regions were hit by lower precipitation after good hydro conditions in 2024.

Three organizations publish world hydropower totals for 2025, and their numbers don’t match.

Source: Ember, Yearly electricity data, IRENA, renewable capacity report for 2026 and IHA, 2026 World Hydropower Outlook. IRENA’s capacity row excludes pure pumped storage, and IHA’s counts conventional hydropower. The n/a cells mark figures a source didn’t publish in the data used.

IHA’s generation figure runs a bit above Ember’s, and neither report explains the gap.

Which countries and US states rely on hydropower most?

China makes more hydropower than any other country, and its row in the table is larger than the next five combined.

Source: Ember, Yearly electricity data, 2025.

Hydro is a modest slice of China’s power mix even at that size. Norway, in the table, makes most of its electricity from hydro, and Paraguay and Ethiopia, which make less hydropower than any country in the table, make nearly all of theirs.

Inside the US, Washington held 27% of conventional hydropower capacity in 2025 and California held 13%, by EIA’s preliminary figures. The western states made 60% of US hydropower in the water year ending September 2023, and Washington and Oregon alone hold 37% of capacity.

If you live in a western state, you’re in the region that made most of the country’s hydroelectricity that year. Wherever you live, your state’s average cost of electricity shows what a kilowatt-hour costs in your state.

What are the biggest hydroelectric dams?

Three Gorges in China has 34 generating units and a capacity of 22.5 GW, and Baihetan, at 16 GW, was ranked the world’s second largest hydro project when it reached full operation in December 2022.

Source: Xinhua via China’s State Council (Three Gorges), Renewable Energy World (Baihetan), Itaipu Binacional (Itaipu) and the US Bureau of Reclamation (Grand Coulee). Three Gorges is converted from 22.5 million kilowatts.

Three Gorges made 111.795 billion kWh in 2020, a record for a single power station that passed the 103.098 billion kWh Itaipu made in 2016.

Itaipu’s own site lists its best year as 103.1 million MWh in 2016. In 2025 it made 72.9 million MWh, according to Paraguay’s La Nacion, which is 29% below that best year.

How much does drought cut hydropower output?

Western US hydropower fell 11% to 141.6 million MWh in the water year ending September 2023, and EIA says drought contributed to the historically low output.

In May 2023, a heat wave 30°F above normal rapidly melted the snowpack in the Columbia River Basin region. According to EIA, water flows in May were high, but much of the water that summer generation needed melted during the heat wave.

A plant’s capacity factor is the share of its maximum possible output that it delivers over a year, and hydro’s fell to 35.0% in 2023 from 43.0% in 2017.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly Table 6.07.B, 2025 annual capacity factors for US utility-scale plants.

How does pumped storage compare with grid batteries?

At the end of 2025, US utility-scale batteries had 43.6 GW of operating power capacity, against 23,156 MW for pumped storage, or 23.2 GW.

Those are gigawatts of power, not gigawatt-hours of stored energy. EIA’s 2022 storage table lists pumped storage’s energy capacity as NA.

DOE says pumped storage acts like a giant battery. Water drops from an upper reservoir through a turbine to make power, and pumps send it back up to recharge. IHA calls pumped storage the world’s dominant form of large-scale energy storage, though POWER’s report doesn’t say whether that counts power or energy.

Source: EIA (US batteries), EIA (US pumped storage), IRENA (pure pumped storage) and IHA (all pumped storage), each at the end of 2025.

In 2019, US pumped storage returned 79% of the electricity put in, against 82% for utility-scale batteries. EIA reported in October 2019 that nearly half of the country’s pumped storage capacity still operating was built in the 1970s.

Operators added another 8.3 GW of batteries in the first half of 2026, the kind of grid-scale battery storage that competes with pumped storage on power.

How much does hydropower cost?

The average installed cost of hydropower fell 10% to USD 2,079 per kilowatt in 2025, IRENA found, yet the cost per megawatt-hour rose 9% as less favourable hydrology and higher financing costs offset the cheaper builds.

Onshore wind averaged USD 33 per megawatt-hour and solar PV USD 44 in 2025, against USD 62 for hydropower. Those figures are what it costs to make power, and what you pay at home depends on your state’s rates.

What are the pros and cons of hydropower?

Hydropower generators don’t directly emit air pollutants, EIA says. IHA cites an IPCC median of 24 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour over a plant’s life cycle.

Reservoirs emit methane. A 2016 global synthesis put emissions from reservoir water surfaces at 0.8 petagrams of CO2 equivalent a year, mostly methane, and it counts every reservoir, including ones used for flood control and irrigation. The exact amount of greenhouse gas reservoirs emit is uncertain and varies by site, according to EIA.

Fish pay a price too. Energy Department-sponsored turbine designs could cut fish deaths to below 2%, against 5% to 10% for the best existing turbines, EIA says.

American Rivers counted 100 dam removals in 30 states in 2025, and 2,350 documented removals since 1912, though the release doesn’t say how many of those dams made power. The largest dam removal in US history took out four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in 2024, and salmon returned to spawn above the old dam sites in less than a month.

Where these numbers come from

The US table joins two EIA releases. The Monthly Energy Review covers 2001 to 2024, and the final Electric Power Annual covers 2025. We worked out each hydro share, the change against 2011 and the renewable share from EIA’s totals, and comparisons like China against the next five countries come from adding the rows in the table. The world and storage tables keep each source’s own figures even where they differ, and the unit conversions (kilowatts to gigawatts, gigawatt-hours to million megawatt-hours) are plain moves of the decimal point.

The 243 GW of pumped storage already under construction

In June 2026, POWER reported that IHA counts 243 GW of pumped storage under construction worldwide, on top of more than 200 GW already operating. China began building the Yarlung Zangbo River hydropower project in 2025, and IHA’s outlook estimates it could make about 300 TWh a year, roughly three times Three Gorges.

In the US, DOE counts 43 pumped storage plants and says the country could more than double that capacity.

If you live near a dam with no generators, adding turbines to dams like it makes up 95% of the new hydropower capacity proposed in the US, by DOE’s 2023 market report.

Top photo: David Brodbeck from Seattle, WA, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top carbon emissions statistics

• Researchers at the Global Carbon Project projected world fossil CO2 at 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025, up 1.1% and a record high.
• EDGAR, the European Commission’s emissions database, counted 54.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in CO2-equivalent in 2025, up 0.7% on 2024.
• Some of the wealthiest countries emit 100 times more CO2 per person than the poorest, according to Our World in Data (OWID).
• US energy-related CO2 rose 2% in 2025, about 115 million tonnes, by EIA’s preliminary count.
• A CREA analysis published in Carbon Brief put China’s CO2 about 0.3% lower in 2025.
• Global power-sector emissions were almost flat in 2025, down 0.04%, Ember found.
• On a consumption basis, the UK emitted 487 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, against 308 million made inside its borders.
• The EU’s net greenhouse gas emissions were an estimated 37% below 1990 in 2024, the European Environment Agency reports.
• NOAA measured carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa at 426.07 ppm in September 2026, up from 424.37 ppm a year earlier.

Which countries emit the most carbon dioxide?

The US ranked second in 2024 and India third, with 4.9 and 3.2 billion tonnes of fossil CO2. The table ranks countries by territorial fossil carbon dioxide, meaning the carbon dioxide released inside each country’s borders.

Source: Global Carbon Project, Global Carbon Budget 2025 national fossil CO2 data for 2024 (CC BY 4.0), processed by OWID, which also calculates the per person, share and percentage columns. Mt is million tonnes. Totals cover fossil fuels and cement and leave out land use and international aviation and shipping.

These totals count carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and from industrial processes. International aviation and shipping appear in the world total but in no country’s row.

The two change columns split the list. India’s emissions are more than double their 2005 level, while the UK’s are down by almost half.

How much carbon dioxide does the world emit?

Global Carbon Budget researchers put world fossil CO2 at 37.8 billion tonnes in 2024, up 1.1% on 2023. The paper subtracts the carbon dioxide that cement reabsorbs through carbonation. The history table below comes from the same data without that subtraction, so its figures run a little higher.

Source: Global Carbon Project, Global Carbon Budget 2025, processed by OWID. The series includes international aviation and shipping and leaves out land use.

The world total fell in four of the 24 years since 2000 and rose in the other 20.

Who has emitted the most since 1750?

The US has emitted 434.9 billion tonnes of CO2 since 1750, or 23.5% of the world’s cumulative total, more than any other country, with China second.

Source: OWID, cumulative CO2 emissions, built on the same national data. Fossil fuels and cement only, with land use left out.

For how those accumulated tonnes connect to warming, see the evidence that the climate is changing.

Why do the world totals differ?

For 2025 the Global Carbon Project’s projection is 38.1 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels and cement, while EDGAR counts 39.96 billion. The IEA lands in between and the Energy Institute below, and the gap comes from what each one counts.

Source: EDGAR 2026 report data, IEA Global Energy Review 2026, the Global Carbon Project’s November 2025 release and the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026. EDGAR’s change is calculated from its 2024 and 2025 totals.

Each figure measures a different slice of emissions, so the four totals can’t be compared line for line.

Country totals differ too. EDGAR counts 13,125.1 million tonnes for China in 2024, more than the figure in the ranked table.

The main country tables use the Global Carbon Budget 2025 national data for 2024, as processed by OWID. Consumption-based figures run one year behind the territorial series. The 2025 figures in this section are early estimates and projections, since country-level data for 2025 isn’t out yet.

How did China, the US, India, the EU and Russia change?

Between 2005 and 2024 emissions more than doubled in China and India and edged up in Russia, while the US and the EU cut theirs. The table gives each year in billion tonnes.

Source: Global Carbon Budget 2025 data supplement, processed by OWID. EU27 counts the 27 member states together.

The 2025 readings disagree about China. The paper’s 2025 projection had China’s fossil CO2 rising 0.4%. The IEA reports that China’s energy CO2 declined by around 0.5%, and the CREA analysis behind the Carbon Brief estimate puts the fall near 0.3%.

AFP reported that the drop is so small that it is not yet clear emissions have peaked. China’s power-sector emissions fell 0.7% in 2025, and India’s fell 2.9%, according to Ember. The power side is covered in how China makes its electricity.

The US moved the other way. If you’re on the US grid, the electricity behind your outlets comes from the sector where EIA found CO2 up 4%, or 58 million tonnes, in 2025. The Energy Institute says more than a third of the 2025 rise in world energy CO2 came from the US.

Which countries emit the most carbon dioxide per person?

Qatar emitted 41.3 tonnes of CO2 per person in 2024, the most of any country with a million or more people, and Gulf states hold six of the seven places at the head of the table.

Source: OWID, CO2 emissions per capita, built on the same national data and OWID’s population estimates. Countries with a million or more people, plus the EU27 and the world for comparison.

If you live in the US, your country’s average is 14.2 tonnes of CO2 a year per person, against 5.39 in the EU. The per person column in the ranked table shows how far China sits below the US and how much further India sits below China.

What is a country’s carbon footprint?

By consumption, the US emitted 5,431.7 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, which is 513.3 million more than it produced inside its borders. OWID defines consumption-based emissions as production-based emissions, minus emissions embedded in exports, plus emissions embedded in imports.

Source: OWID, consumption-based CO2 emissions, built on the same national data. The consumption series ends in 2023, so these figures are a year older than the first table.

China and India are net exporters of emissions on this measure, as is Russia. The US, Japan, Germany and the UK are net importers.

If you live in the UK, the goods you buy count in the government’s own consumption-based statistics, which follow the spending of UK residents wherever in the world the emissions arise. The territorial side of Germany’s gap is covered in Germany’s coal and nuclear choices.

What changes when every greenhouse gas is counted?

Fossil CO2 was 73.8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 and methane 17.6%, by EDGAR’s count. EDGAR converts the other gases to CO2-equivalent with IPCC AR5 100-year warming potentials.

Adding the other gases and land use reshuffles the list. Brazil is fourth on all greenhouse gases in 2024 and thirteenth on fossil CO2.

Source: OWID, greenhouse gas emissions including land use, which uses Jones et al. (2025) for the gases, and the Global Carbon Budget 2025 for fossil CO2.

EDGAR leaves land use out and ranks Brazil sixth in 2025. The six largest emitters in EDGAR’s count produced 62% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2025. National inventories run further behind, and the latest finished US report on EPA’s inventory page counts 6,343 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent in 2022.

The November 2026 update and the 2035 targets

OWID expects its next update of this data on 13 November 2026. China’s 2035 target is a cut in net greenhouse gases of 7 to 10% from peak levels, which Climate Action Tracker says is likely to deliver only limited additional reductions.

The EU’s member states project a 47% net cut from 1990 by 2030 on current policies. Targets like these are what the UN climate talks argue over, and how carbon pricing works covers one tool governments use to put a price on emissions like these.

To check a country that isn’t in the tables, OWID’s CO2 pages let you chart any country’s annual and cumulative emissions.

Top photo: PGEGiEK, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Geothermal meets less than 1% of world energy demand and made about 0.35% of US electricity in 2025. Enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, crack open hot rock that lacks natural water pathways, and Fervo Energy’s first Cape Station block in Utah began commercial operation on September 30, 2026.

Top geothermal energy statistics

• US geothermal plants generated 15,628 GWh of electricity in 2025, 1.4% more than in 2024.
• Installed geothermal capacity worldwide reached 17,173 MW at the end of 2025, up 223 MW in the year.
• EIA counted 2,683.9 MW of net summer geothermal capacity in the US in July 2026.
• IRENA puts geothermal at $89 per megawatt-hour in 2025, against $44 for solar PV.
• Compared with fossil-fuel plants, geothermal plants emit about 99% less carbon dioxide.
• The IEA sees potential for up to 800 GW of geothermal capacity worldwide, about 15% of global electricity demand growth to 2050.
• Cape Station’s Phase I is about 100 MW in three 33 MW GeoBlocks, and the first reached First Power on September 24, 2026.

What is geothermal energy, and is it renewable?

EIA describes geothermal energy as heat found inside the earth and counts it as renewable because the earth constantly produces that heat. The heat comes from the slow breakdown of radioactive particles in the earth’s core.

Most major resources sit near the edges of tectonic plates, where most volcanoes are.

Geothermal also heats buildings directly. Iceland’s government says about 85% of houses there are heated with it. The earth 10 feet below your own yard stays between 50°F and 60°F, the steady temperature a geothermal heat pump draws on.

For how geothermal fits beside wind and solar, see how the renewable energy sources compare.

Three ways to turn underground heat into power

Plants fall into three designs, and the state and temperature of the underground fluid decide which one a site uses.

Dry steam plants are the simplest. The reservoir already produces steam, so the steam runs straight to the turbine, the way a kettle’s whistle can spin a fan held over the spout. DOE says the design was first used in Italy in 1904 and still runs at The Geysers in northern California, the world’s largest single source of geothermal power.

Flash steam plants, which DOE calls a common type, tap fluid hotter than 182°C (360°F). As that pressurized water reaches a low-pressure tank at the surface, part of it flashes into steam. The steam spins the turbine, and any liquid left can be flashed again in a second tank to extract more energy.

Binary plants work where the resource isn’t scalding hot. The geothermal fluid never touches the turbine. It passes through a heat exchanger and boils a second fluid with a much lower boiling point, which drives the turbine on its own loop.

A geothermal heat pump is a different machine. It moves heat between one building and the ground instead of generating electricity, and what a home ground-source system costs is a separate question.

How much of the US and world electricity comes from geothermal?

US geothermal output has grown about 14% since 2001, from 13.7 billion kWh to 15.6 billion kWh in 2025.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review Table 7.2a for 2001 to 2024, all sectors, and EIA, Electric Power Annual 2025, Table 1.1 for 2025, utility-scale plants only.

Worldwide, 25 countries generated about 92 billion kWh from geothermal in 2022, and Kenya got the largest share of its own electricity that way, about 43%. That’s roughly 0.3% of the 28,894 TWh the world generated that year.

The IEA’s figure covers all energy demand, and electricity is one slice of that, so the two shares don’t conflict.

Where the world’s geothermal capacity actually sits

Ten countries hold more than 93% of the roughly 17,173 MW of geothermal capacity installed worldwide at the end of 2025, and the United States leads with 3,953 MW.

Source: ThinkGeoEnergy, Global top 10 geothermal power countries at year-end 2025. Shares are our arithmetic on ThinkGeoEnergy’s world total.

ThinkGeoEnergy reports installed nameplate capacity but counts only plants that are operating, so its US total runs above EIA’s 2,683.9 MW of net summer capacity for July 2026, the output a plant can supply at summer peak after its own power use.

These tables mix sources that count differently. The world share above divides an EIA numerator by an Ember denominator for the same year, and EIA’s US figures cover utility-scale plants.

Which US states have the most geothermal power?

California made 68.6% of US geothermal electricity in 2025, but Nevada leans on it harder, with geothermal at 8.6% of its own generation against California’s 5.2%.

Source: EIA, Use of geothermal energy for 2025 generation shares and EIA, Electric Power Monthly Table 6.2.B for capacity. Seven states had geothermal plants.

Utah ranks third in the nation for installed geothermal capacity. If you live in California, your power provider may be one of the California utilities holding 500 MW of Cape Station’s first two phases, such as Southern California Edison, Clean Power Alliance or Desert Community Energy.

How much does geothermal power cost?

IRENA put geothermal’s global weighted-average cost at $89 per megawatt-hour in 2025, the second-highest of the seven technologies in the table, behind only concentrating solar.

Source: IRENA, Renewable power generation costs in 2025. LCOE is the levelized cost of electricity.

Geothermal’s 2024 average was $60 per megawatt-hour, down 16% from 2023, according to IRENA’s earlier report, so the rise to $89 in 2025 spans two IRENA reports.

Lazard’s 2026 analysis puts new US geothermal at $67 to $111 per megawatt-hour without subsidies. That range rests on an illustrative capital cost of $7,000 per kW drawn from publicly disclosed estimates.

DOE’s Enhanced Geothermal Shot sets a target of $45 per megawatt-hour by 2035, a 90% cut in EGS costs. To compare these figures with what you pay at home, see what electricity costs in your state.

Pros and cons of geothermal energy

Geothermal plants can run around the clock, but the US fleet’s 65.9% capacity factor in 2025 sits well below the 91.1% for nuclear.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2025, Table 4.8.B.

The US geothermal figure was 76.0% in 2018, while the IEA put the global geothermal utilization rate at over 75% in 2023. The two cover different fleets and years. For how the measure works, see what capacity factor means.

EIA says geothermal plants emit about 99% less carbon dioxide than fossil-fuel plants, and NREL’s 2017 systematic review of life-cycle emissions by Eberle and colleagues put the median at 32.0 grams of CO2eq per kWh for EGS binary plants, against 47.0 for high-temperature flash plants.

The limits are where the resource sits, what the plants cost to build and, for EGS, the ground shaking that drilling can set off.

What makes enhanced geothermal different

Every power plant above depends on a natural hydrothermal reservoir, and EIA describes hydrothermal resources as underground areas that hold both water and heat. EGS targets hot rock that has the temperature but not the permeability.

Engineers drill into that rock and pump water down at pressure high enough to open cracks in the stone, the way a hydraulic jack uses fluid pressure to lift a car. At Utah FORGE, stimulating the wells in April 2024 created the fracture network that forms the reservoir. Crews then pump cool water down an injection well and draw it back up through a production well.

If EGS works at scale, geothermal can reach beyond the plate edges where natural reservoirs cluster. DOE’s March 2024 Liftoff report sees US geothermal reaching 90 GW or more by 2050, a twentyfold increase. The IEA sees potential for up to 800 GW worldwide and says costs for newer geothermal technologies could fall 80% by 2035, to around $50 per megawatt-hour.

The Utah projects testing whether EGS scales

Fervo Energy says Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah is the first greenfield EGS development in the world to reach contractual commercial operation, and that its first GeoBlock produced 33 MW of net power after a 23-month build and commissioning.

A smaller Nevada pilot, Project Red, came before it. A 30-day well test there supported 3.5 MW of electricity from a horizontal well pair with 3,250-foot laterals, and Project Red came online in 2023 and has supplied the local grid since. A 2024 Cape Station test reached a maximum flow of 107 kg/s at high temperature, potentially enabling over 10 MW, according to Utility Dive.

Fervo says about 900 MW of Cape Station is fully contracted. Google signed a 396 MW agreement on September 1, 2026 for a Utah data center, following a 320 MW agreement with Southern California Edison in 2024.

Source: Canary Media, ThinkGeoEnergy on the Google agreement, Fervo Energy on the Shell agreement, ThinkGeoEnergy on the Fervo IPO and Fervo Energy on commercial operation. The dates for later phases are Fervo’s expectations.

Utah FORGE is the Department of Energy’s EGS research site near Milford. It ran a 30-day circulation test in August 2024 that produced temperatures around 370°F and began an extended circulation test in August 2026, a stage DOE says only a handful of EGS projects worldwide have reached. DOE extended the project through 2028 with an additional $80 million.

Drilling costs, earthquakes and permits still slow EGS down

Well costs have fallen. A 2025 Stanford Geothermal Workshop study found vertical wells cost 12% to 24% less than a 2017 baseline. Horizontal wells cost 18% to 26% less. The study credits PDC drill bits and oil and gas techniques such as multiwell pad drilling.

That doesn’t make EGS cheap. CleanTechnica’s Michael Barnard wrote in November 2025 that EGS projects often sit at $10,000 to $15,000 per kW, and that a project may need four and a half to seven years from first drilling to commercial operation. Fervo’s build time, quoted above, covers the power facility and not the drilling before it, so it doesn’t settle Barnard’s estimate. Barnard’s per-kilowatt figure is an analyst’s estimate, and Lazard’s illustrative figure for new geothermal in the cost section is lower.

Induced seismicity is the other hard limit, and it has already ended a project. The Basel, Switzerland EGS project started hydraulic stimulation in December 2006, and a local-magnitude 3.4 quake hit five hours after the stimulation well was shut in. The quakes caused no injuries but led to $9 million of damage, and the project was shut down permanently in December 2009.

Fervo ran Project Red under an induced seismicity mitigation protocol built on DOE best practices and says it finished without incident.

On US federal land, permitting runs through the Bureau of Land Management, which has authority to manage geothermal leasing on approximately 245 million acres of public land, plus 104 million acres of Forest Service land. In April 2024 it adopted two categorical exclusions for geothermal exploration, though developing a resource still requires further environmental analysis.

Geothermal Rising, a trade group, says the 2025 tax law preserves full 48E and 45Y credits for geothermal projects that begin construction by 2033, phasing down through 2036.

The Cape Station blocks still to come online

Two more 33 MW GeoBlocks are due at Cape Station by January 1, 2027, and a further 400 MW is under construction for 2028. Google’s agreement covers a Utah data center, and how AI load is straining aging wires explains the grid pressure behind deals like it.

The extended circulation test at Utah FORGE pumps cool water for months, and DOE says it should answer the pressing questions about thermal decline and water loss. FORGE publishes its data through DOE’s Geothermal Data Repository, so you can check the results yourself when the test ends.

Top biomass statistics

• Biomass made up about 55% of the renewable energy the US consumed in 2025, a share computed from EIA’s Monthly Energy Review.
• US biomass use went from 5,101 trillion Btu in 2024 to 4,853 trillion Btu in 2025, a 4.9% drop computed from EIA’s preliminary table.
• Industry used 48% of the biomass energy the US consumed in 2025, more than any other sector.
• Bioenergy generated 710 TWh of electricity worldwide in 2025, about 2.2% of the total, in Ember’s data.
• IRENA counted 155 GW of bioenergy capacity worldwide in 2025, up from 104 GW in 2016.
• The UK got 14.1% of its electricity from bioenergy in 2025, the highest share among the eight countries tabled below.
• The US had 74 operating pellet manufacturers in July 2026, with room to make 13.2 million tons a year.
• The IPCC’s 2014 lifecycle review put dedicated biomass power at a median of 230 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour, against 820 for coal.
• Bioenergy projects commissioned in 2025 delivered power at a global average of $86 per megawatt-hour, compared with $44 for solar PV.

What is biomass?

Biomass is organic material from plants and animals that people burn directly or convert into fuel. DOE’s list of biomass feedstocks includes dedicated energy crops, crop residues, forestry residues, algae, sawmill waste, municipal waste and wet waste.

EIA counts biomass among the major types of renewable energy, alongside hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar, the other renewable energy sources on its list. The debate over whether biomass is carbon neutral is separate, and the pros and cons section has the short version.

What are examples of biomass?

Wood and wood waste, such as bark, sawdust, wood chips, wood scrap and paper mill residues, supplied about 2% of US energy in 2025.

Crops are the liquid-fuel example. US transportation used 1,145 trillion Btu of fuel ethanol in 2025, and the guide to ethanol and other biofuels covers that side in full.

Household and industrial trash counts too. For every 100 pounds of US municipal solid waste, about 85 pounds can be burned as fuel.

Manure and sewage, along with landfill gas, make biogas, a fuel that is 45% to 65% methane depending on what it came from.

How does biomass work?

Direct combustion is the most common method of turning biomass into useful energy, and gasification heats the material with controlled amounts of oxygen or steam to make a fuel gas called syngas.

In a waste-to-energy plant, a giant claw on a crane dumps trash into a combustion chamber, and the heat turns water into steam that drives a turbine generator. A dairy farm takes a different route. Anaerobic digesters hold manure while bacteria break it down into biogas, which the farm can burn to heat water and run generators. EPA’s AgSTAR program counted 394 operating livestock digesters in 2023, up from 25 in 2000.

Landfills give off biogas too. EPA counted 542 landfill-gas energy projects running as of September 2024 and rates 444 more landfills as good candidates. It also notes that methane is at least 28 times as potent as CO2 over 100 years.

How much US energy comes from biomass?

US biomass use grew from 2,622 trillion Btu in 2001 to 4,853 trillion Btu in 2025, and biofuels supplied all of that increase. The table gives the yearly totals by type.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review Table 10.1, September 2026. The 2025 row is preliminary and EIA may revise it.

Biofuels did the growing, while wood and waste barely moved.

Who uses biomass?

Industry used the most biomass energy in 2025 at 2,317.5 trillion Btu, and the fuels that go into vehicles came next at 1,682.8 trillion Btu.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review Table 10.2a, Table 10.2b and Table 10.2c, September 2026, preliminary 2025 data. Shares are each sector divided by the 4,853.1 trillion Btu total, rounded to one decimal.

Wood-product makers and paper mills lead the wood side. Industry accounted for 68% of US wood energy in 2025, mostly wood-product and paper makers that burn mill waste for steam and electricity.

If you heat with firewood or pellets, you’re the residential row in that table, and the smoke findings in the pros and cons section apply to you.

Power plants take a small slice. Biomass made about 1% of US utility-scale electricity in 2025, and EIA lists biomass-fired units among generators often run as base-load resources.

How much of the world’s energy comes from biomass?

Modern bioenergy was 45% of world renewable energy supply in 2024, and traditional biomass added another 19%, according to an IEA Bioenergy presentation from June 2026.

The WHO says around 2.1 billion people still cook over open fires or on inefficient stoves that burn wood, animal dung, crop waste, coal or kerosene, and it estimates household air pollution caused 2.9 million deaths in 2021.

On the grid, China generated more bioenergy electricity than any other country in 2025, at 213 TWh.

Source: Our World in Data, electricity production by source and share of electricity from bioenergy, built from Ember and Energy Institute data and updated June 30, 2026. Data are for 2025.

On capacity, IRENA counts 33 GW of bioenergy in China and 10 GW in the US in 2025.

How big are biomass power plants?

Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, England, has 2.6 GW of active dispatchable generation, several times the capacity of any other plant in the table.

Source: Drax Group, 2025 full-year results, Lynemouth Power, Power Technology and EIA Today in Energy. Each figure is the operator’s or reporter’s own, the Power Technology article is undated, and the list isn’t a worldwide ranking.

Drax generated 15.0 TWh in 2025, about 6% of UK power. That is a different measure from the UK share in the country table, which covers all UK bioenergy.

The UK government said Drax’s subsidies will be halved after April 2027 and run until 2031. The deal also caps its output at 27% of capacity, and the UK regulator Ofgem fined Drax £25 million in 2024 for misreporting how it sourced its wood.

How many wood pellets does the US export?

The US exported about 9.4 million tons of wood pellets in 2025, according to EIA. In the first seven months of 2026 exports reached 5.5 million tons, a total computed from EIA’s monthly figures.

Those pellet plants employed the equivalent of 2,516 full-time workers in July 2026, according to EIA.

The UK was the main destination in 2014, when almost three-quarters of US pellet exports went there, mainly to make electricity.

What are the pros and cons of biomass?

Part of the fuel is trash. Waste-to-energy plants cut the volume of trash by about 87%, and the fuel supply is large on paper. DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory say the US could sustainably produce at least 1 billion dry tons of nonfood biomass a year by 2040, against about 400 million tons used when the 2023 report was written.

On cost, IRENA’s table puts bioenergy above solar and wind and below geothermal and concentrated solar.

Source: IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2025, global weighted-average levelized cost of electricity for projects commissioned in 2025.

Carbon is the contested part. EIA says biomass is carbon neutral because source plants capture almost as much CO2 as biomass releases when burned. The IPCC’s 2014 lifecycle table gives a range that depends on the kind of biomass plant.

Source: IPCC, Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group III, Annex III, Table A.III.2, lifecycle emissions including the albedo effect, 2014.

Dedicated biomass sits well below fossil fuels such as coal and gas in that table, while co-firing biomass with coal lands close to coal itself.

Smoke is the local cost. A Science Advances study found residential wood burning accounts for 21.9% of average winter exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) across the US and leads to about 8,600 premature deaths a year, with most of those affected living in cities. Only 2% of US homes rely on wood as their main heat, so even if you never light a fire, wood smoke is part of the winter air you breathe.

Where these numbers come from

Several figures here are computed from EIA tables, namely the renewable share, the 2025 drop, the sector shares and the pellet total. EIA’s 2025 numbers are preliminary. Ember and IRENA publish different bioenergy electricity totals for the same years, so this page takes electricity from Ember through Our World in Data and capacity from IRENA.

Manure digesters under construction and cleaner wood stoves

EPA’s AgSTAR program counted 73 more livestock digesters under construction or being upgraded to make renewable natural gas, in a table that runs through 2024.

If you burn wood at home, EIA says modern wood-burning stoves, pellet stoves and fireplace inserts can reduce particulates.

Top climate change cause statistics

• The IPCC puts human-caused warming at about 1.07°C between the 1850 to 1900 average and 2010 to 2019.
• Scripps measured carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa at 432.00 ppm in May 2026, 1.8 ppm above May 2025.
• The world emitted 54.1 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2025, up 0.7%, counting every greenhouse gas but leaving out land use.
• The Global Carbon Project projects a record 38.1 billion tonnes of fossil CO2 in 2025.
• Electricity and heat made 29.2% of 2025 emissions, ahead of transport at 16.2%, in EDGAR’s sector totals.
• Carbon dioxide in the air rose 3.5 ppm from 2023 to 2024, the biggest one-year jump since modern measurements began in 1957.
• NASA’s satellite measurements of sunlight, which start in 1978, show no upward trend.
• Volcanoes release less than 1 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, against more than 35 billion from fossil fuels and cement.

What causes climate change?

Human activity causes it, and the Met Office names burning fossil fuels as the main cause. The IPCC’s sixth assessment says it’s unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, and it finds that carbon dioxide is up 47% since 1750 as of 2019.

EPA says carbon dioxide enters the air through burning fossil fuels and biological materials such as trees, and through chemical reactions such as cement making. To see where these fuels come from, read how fossil fuels formed.

NASA’s consensus page quotes the American Association for the Advancement of Science saying that about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. The page on the evidence of human-caused climate change lays out the full case.

How does the greenhouse effect work?

Think of a blanket. The Met Office describes greenhouse gases as a warming blanket around the Earth. Sunlight passes through the air and warms the ground, the ground gives off infrared heat, and the gases catch some of that heat on its way to space.

NASA says about 90% of that heat is absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, which slows its loss to space. Without the blanket Earth would be about 30 degrees colder, and with it the planet holds an average of 15°C.

Burning fossil fuels adds more of those gases, which thickens the blanket.

Which greenhouse gases cause climate change?

Carbon dioxide made 73.8% of 2025 emissions and about two thirds of the heating from long-lived greenhouse gases in 2024, 2.333 of the 3.539 watts per square meter in NOAA’s table.

Source: EDGAR 2026 report for emissions and NOAA’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Index table for heating. Emissions are in CO2 equivalent at 100-year warming potentials and leave out land use. Heating is each gas’s share of NOAA’s 2024 radiative forcing, and its F-gas row also counts CFCs and HCFCs, so that row isn’t like for like.

A third measure comes from a model by Jones and colleagues, shown by Our World in Data. It puts the warming from cumulative emissions through 2024 at 1.22°C for carbon dioxide and 0.38°C for methane. The model leaves out cooling from sulfur dioxide and aerosols, so net warming can be lower than its three-gas total of 1.68°C. Dividing the file’s source columns shows that 62.6% of that total comes from fossil fuels and industry, and 37.4% from agriculture and land use.

Methane comes next. About 65% of methane emissions come from direct human sources, by the Global Methane Budget’s count for 2010 to 2019. Over 100 years a tonne of it warms 27 to 30 times as much as a tonne of CO2, though it lasts about a decade. For the oil and gas side, see methane released by oil and gas operations.

Nitrous oxide traps 273 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over 100 years and stays in the air for more than a century. Human emissions rose 40% from 1980 to 2020, mostly from farming.

Synthetic gases such as hydrofluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride are powerful greenhouse gases, with warming potentials in the thousands or tens of thousands.

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but NASA says it is not a direct cause of climate change, since a warming ocean puts more of it into the air.

How much has carbon dioxide in the air risen?

Carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa averaged 427.35 ppm in 2025, up from 315.98 ppm in 1959. That’s a rise of about 35%, worked out from NOAA’s two annual values. The global marine surface average was 425.62 ppm in 2025.

Source: NOAA, Mauna Loa annual mean and NOAA, global annual mean. Values for 2025 are preliminary, and Mauna Loa readings from December 2022 to July 2023 come from a site at the Maunakea Observatories after the Mauna Loa eruption.

Before 1850, carbon dioxide sat between about 270 and 280 ppm for thousands of years. The Global Carbon Budget puts 2025 at 425.6 ppm, 53% above the pre-industrial level of around 278 ppm. NASA says human activity has raised the level by nearly 50% since 1750.

The rise is speeding up. NOAA measured a record-breaking 3.72 ppm increase from January 2024 to January 2025, while the WMO’s figure for 2023 to 2024 was lower, and the two come from different measurement networks. The WMO says growth has tripled since the 1960s, from 0.8 to 2.4 ppm a year in 2011 to 2020.

Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from?

Making electricity and heat leads the list. EPA says burning fossil fuels for it is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions, at 34% of the world total in 2019.

Source: European Commission, EDGAR 2026 workbook, summing its global rows for each sector. Shares and changes are calculated from those sums. The totals count fossil CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and F-gases at 100-year warming potentials and leave out land use.

Electricity and heat more than doubled between 1990 and 2025, and industrial processes such as cement and steel nearly tripled. Buildings shrank while the other seven sectors grew.

If you burn gas or oil at your own address, that fuel sits in the buildings row, and the electricity you buy sits in the electricity row. The IPCC’s 2019 count, which assigns electricity to the buildings that use it, lifts buildings from 6% to 16% of emissions. The same report puts energy supply at 34% of 2019 emissions, a bigger slice than EDGAR’s 29.2% for 2025. The years and sector definitions differ, and the IPCC’s total includes land use.

Almost all of the world’s transport energy, 95%, comes from petroleum-based fuels, largely gasoline and diesel. If you drive a gasoline or diesel car, your fuel is part of that figure.

Agriculture and land use, forestry included, were 22% of 2019 emissions, mostly farming and deforestation. EDGAR’s agriculture row leaves out land use.

On coal’s part in the power mix, see how coal use has changed, and for the policies that attach a cost to emissions, see putting a price on carbon.

How much of climate change comes from cutting down forests?

The sources disagree on land use. The 2025 carbon budget projects land-use emissions such as deforestation at 4.1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2025, on top of the 38.1 billion tonnes of fossil CO2 that CSIRO also reports.

EDGAR’s workbook has deforestation releasing 3.67 billion tonnes in 2025, or a net 0.88 billion after forests absorb some. The IPCC’s 2019 inventory put net land-use CO2 at 6.6 billion tonnes, give or take 4.6.

The IPCC figure is for 2019 and the other two are for 2025, and the three come from separate teams. EDGAR’s net total is small because forests absorb carbon, and the Global Carbon Budget calls the uncertainty in land-use emissions persistent and large.

How much warming does each cause account for?

The IPCC’s ranges for 2010 to 2019 split the warming by cause. Well-mixed greenhouse gases added 1.0°C to 2.0°C of warming, while aerosols and other human drivers took away up to 0.8°C. All human causes combined come to 0.8°C to 1.3°C, and the range for natural drivers straddles zero, so they add little to the net warming.

Source: IPCC, Climate Change 2021 Summary for Policymakers. Ranges are the IPCC’s “likely” ranges for 2010 to 2019 against 1850 to 1900, and aerosols appear as a negative contribution because they cool.

The same update says that for 2016 to 2025 observed warming averaged 1.26°C, of which 1.24°C was human-induced. It also finds that greenhouse gas emissions averaged an all-time high of 54.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year over 2015 to 2024.

Do the Sun, volcanoes or orbital cycles cause climate change?

No. The IPCC’s table of drivers puts the Sun’s effect since 1750 at 0.01 watts per square meter, against 2.72 for all human causes together. NASA’s satellite measurements show no upward trend in sunlight either.

Source: IPCC, Climate Change 2021 Chapter 7, Table 7.8, effective radiative forcing for 1750 to 2019. The aerosol row adds the table’s aerosol-radiation and aerosol-cloud rows. Volcanic forcing is left out of the IPCC table because eruptions are episodic.

Volcanoes emit less than 1 billion tonnes of CO2 a year, a small fraction of the human total. Several US states emit more CO2 in a year than all the volcanoes on the planet combined.

Orbital cycles work on timescales of tens of thousands of years. NASA lists cycles of about 100,000 years for the shape of Earth’s orbit and 41,000 years for its tilt, and says they are responsible for triggering the beginning and end of glaciation periods.

Human-made aerosols cool the air, so they carry a negative number in the table. The chapter’s summary gives minus 1.3 for 1750 to 2014, a different span from the table’s.

How we put these numbers together

The sector table sums the global rows of EDGAR’s 2026 workbook, and the heating shares divide each gas’s 2024 forcing in NOAA’s table by NOAA’s total. Sources count differently, so the same year can carry two values. The WMO’s bulletin of 16 October 2025 gives 423.9 ppm for 2024 on its own network, and NOAA’s global figure runs lower.

We update this page when NOAA posts new Mauna Loa data and when the WMO or the Global Carbon Project issues a new report. The Global Carbon Project’s 2025 budget came out on 13 November 2025.

Why your car and your power supply are the sources closest to home

In the US, transportation is the largest source of direct greenhouse gas emissions, by EPA’s inventory for 2022. If you pay an electric bill there, 60% of the power behind it came from burning fossil fuels in that year, mostly coal and natural gas.

How fast electric cars are catching on and the types of renewable energy show what switching looks like in numbers. To find your own share, start with your fuel receipts and your power bill, the two places where those sources show up on paper.

Top electric car statistics

• The IEA counts around 1.5 million electric car sales in the US in 2025, slightly lower than in 2024.
• The Alliance for Automotive Innovation reports that EVs were 2.5% of all light-duty vehicles in operation in the US at the end of 2025.
• Cox Automotive estimates that battery electric cars were about 6.4% of new US vehicle sales in the third quarter of 2026, up from 5.8% in the second quarter.
• The average new EV sold for $55,879 in September 2026, according to Kelley Blue Book transaction data.
• Lithium-ion battery pack prices fell 8% to a record $108 per kWh in 2025, BloombergNEF found.
• 78,914 of the US’s public charging ports were DC fast chargers on October 15, 2026, according to the Department of Energy.
• AAA’s 2026 study found EV charging costs 66% to 70% lower than fuel costs for gas vehicles in the categories it studied.
• Pew Research Center found that 32% of US adults would seriously consider an EV as their next vehicle in March 2026, against 44% for a hybrid.
• EPA reports a record 27.2 miles per gallon for the average new vehicle in model year 2024.

What counts as an electric car

All-electric cars run on electricity only, using one or more motors powered by rechargeable battery packs. Plug-in hybrids pair a gasoline engine with a battery that charges from an outlet or charging station, and EPA reports them separately from battery-only cars. A conventional hybrid combines a gasoline engine with an electric motor, and the plug-in version adds a high-capacity battery.

In the numbers below, “plug-in” means both types, and “all-electric” or “battery electric” means a car with no gasoline engine. A plug-in hybrid can cost roughly $4 to $8 thousand more than a comparable non-plug-in hybrid, according to an undated Department of Energy estimate.

A motor turns stored electricity into motion without burning fuel. EVs convert over 77% of the electricity from the grid into power at the wheels, while gasoline vehicles convert about 12% to 30% of the fuel’s energy. EVs also emit no tailpipe pollutants, although the power plant producing the electricity may emit them. Those emissions depend on the fuel behind the grid, which makes the share of renewable energy in your state’s electricity part of the answer.

Fuel cell and natural gas vehicles are outside this page. The hydrogen fuel cells and natural gas vehicles pages cover those.

How many electric cars are on US roads

The count of registered all-electric vehicles rose 26.3% during 2025, to 5,689,100. The counts are approximate and come from the National Laboratory of the Rockies, formerly NREL, which derives them from Experian vehicle data. They’re totals through the end of each year and aren’t annual sales.

California alone holds 1,843,100 of those vehicles, about a third of the US total, and Florida and Texas follow. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation counts 164 electric models for sale in the fourth quarter of 2025.

How many electric cars does the US sell each year

Summing Argonne National Laboratory’s monthly sales table gives 1,239,505 all-electric and 270,490 plug-in hybrid sales in 2025, and the table below shows the same count back to 2017.

Source: Argonne National Laboratory, Light Duty Electric Drive Vehicles Monthly Sales Updates, with annual sums and shares calculated from the monthly rows. Shares are of all new light-duty vehicle sales, and hybrids are conventional hybrids that don’t plug in.

The 2024 row is where hybrids pass plug-ins, and the plug-in share dips in the row after it. Argonne’s summary page says 2025 plug-in sales fell 4% from 2024. Summing the monthly rows gives a 3.3% drop, so the decline is between 3% and 4%.

Cox’s 7.8% share for 2025 counts battery electric cars only, while the IEA’s figure of around 10% adds plug-in hybrids, as the table above does, so the two differ by definition.

Cox Automotive estimates 725,888 battery electric sales from January through September 2026, 30.3% below the same months of 2025. It puts third-quarter 2026 sales at 262,649, the highest in a year, but 39.5% below the third quarter of 2025, when buyers rushed ahead of the federal credit’s end on September 30, 2025.

Cox estimates Tesla sold 589,160 battery electric cars in 2025, 46.2% of the total. Its share of battery electric sales was 52.9% in the first nine months of 2026. How policy and other countries’ markets shape electric vehicle sales around the world has its own page.

How much electric cars cost to buy

Kelley Blue Book data put the premium for an EV at about 11% over comparable gasoline and hybrid models in 2026, down from close to 18% on average in 2025. If you shop for a new EV, the average buyer paid $55,879 in September 2026, against $50,562 for the average new vehicle of any type. Both are transaction prices, meaning what buyers paid.

Lithium-ion pack prices fell 8% in 2025 to a record $108 per kWh, and packs for battery electric vehicles averaged $99, BloombergNEF reports. BloombergNEF’s figures are global averages and say nothing directly about US sticker prices.

Charging adds a running cost on top of the purchase price, and what it costs to charge an electric car at home depends on the model’s efficiency and your local electricity rate.

Which electric cars sell the most

The Tesla Model Y led US battery electric sales in 2025 with 357,528 vehicles in Cox Automotive’s estimates, and the table below ranks ten models by their sales that year.

Source: Cox Automotive and Kelley Blue Book estimates, Q4 2025 EV Sales Report for 2025 and Q3 2026 EV Sales Report for January to September 2026. Models are ranked by 2025 sales.

The 2026 column covers nine months, so read it for rank order and not against the 2025 totals. Electrek’s 2025 list prints 189,903 for the Model 3, which is Cox’s 2024 figure, so the table uses Cox’s own 2025 count.

How far electric cars go on a charge

The average EPA-rated range of a new all-electric model rose from 106 miles for model year 2012 to 302 miles for 2026, in a calculation from the EPA’s certification data.

Source: fueleconomy.gov vehicle data file, updated September 29, 2026, with average, median and longest range calculated across every all-electric configuration listed for each model year. Every configuration counts equally and the figures aren’t weighted by sales.

The average dipped for model year 2021 and has risen every year since. Recurrent, which analyzes real-world driving data, puts the average expected range of popular EVs at 325 miles for 2026 models, up from 293 for 2025. The two figures measure different things, since Recurrent covers popular models using real-world conditions while the EPA average counts every certified configuration.

The average 2026 EV uses 37.5 kWh per 100 miles, and the most efficient models use about 23.

How electric car charging works

The US had 82,756 public charging locations with 260,827 ports on October 15, 2026, according to the Department of Energy. Public ports come in three speeds, and Level 1 adds about 5 miles of range per hour. The table shows what the faster levels add.

Source: AFDC charging station basics for charging speeds and AFDC station counts for ports on October 15, 2026, with shares calculated from the counts.

AFDC says most EV drivers charge overnight at home with Level 1 or Level 2 equipment but gives no percentage, and that many owners can meet their daily driving needs with a Level 1 cord and an ordinary outlet. On the grid side, EPA says EV charging makes up less than 1% of California’s grid load, even during peak hours.

How long an electric car battery lasts

EPA, citing a Recurrent study, reports that battery replacements due to failure have averaged 2.5% outside major recalls and run below 0.5% for model year 2016 and later. Recurrent’s data show the average EV retains 97% of its range after three years and 95% after five.

Modeling by the National Laboratory of the Rockies suggests batteries may last 12 to 15 years in moderate climates. Extreme climates cut the modeled life to 8 to 12 years. AFDC also notes that complete data on EV battery failures isn’t available, so the lifetimes come from modeling.

Many manufacturers offer 8-year, 100,000-mile warranties on EV batteries, AFDC says. Kia covers its EV batteries for 10 years or 100,000 miles. Your own coverage depends on the maker, so check the terms for the car you’re considering.

Studies cited by AFDC find that a battery could keep at least 70% of its initial capacity at the end of its life if it hasn’t failed or been damaged. That makes second-use jobs such as stationary grid and backup power technically feasible, and it’s the work of battery energy storage systems. AFDC adds that the economics of second-life batteries are still evolving.

Costs and trade-offs of owning an electric car

AAA’s 2026 study found EV charging costs about 66% to 70% lower than fuel costs for gas vehicles in the categories it studied, though higher depreciation and finance costs often outweighed the savings. The study used national averages of $4.15 a gallon for gas and 18 cents per kWh for electricity.

AAA’s ownership-cost figures at 15,000 miles a year put the medium electric SUV at $0.955 a mile against $0.962 for gas, the only one of four classes where the electric version costs less.

Source: AAA, Your Driving Costs 2026, as published by Kelley Blue Book, at 15,000 miles a year. Totals count more than fuel, including depreciation and finance costs.

If you drive 15,000 miles a year in a medium sedan, those figures put the electric version about $3,090 a year above the gas one.

Smaller line items pull in opposite directions. AAA’s 2025 edition put EV maintenance at 10.07 cents a mile against 11.04 for the average vehicle. Full-coverage insurance for an EV averaged $1,995 a year against $1,694 for the average vehicle.

J.D. Power’s 2026 ownership study found that nearly all new battery EV owners, 96%, would consider another battery EV for their next vehicle. The study surveyed EV owners, so it doesn’t compare problem rates with gas cars. Shopper interest has fallen from 42% of US adults in 2022 to 32% in March 2026, the share who would seriously consider an EV.

Public charging is the gap to check before you buy

As quoted by the American Public Power Association, J.D. Power’s Brent Gruber says that public charging is the top reason new-vehicle shoppers reject EVs.

The company’s 2026 study found failed public charging visits fell to a record low of 12%, down from 14% a year earlier. Satisfaction with DC fast chargers rose 12 points to 666 out of 1,000. Satisfaction with public Level 2 chargers fell 12 points.

Before you buy, write down your daily miles and compare them with the 40 miles that 8 hours on a 120-volt outlet adds in AFDC’s example. If a home outlet covers the gap, public charging is a backup. If it doesn’t, count the DC fast ports along your usual routes before you sign anything.

Top photo: Gregory Varnum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top US power outage statistics

• US customers averaged 11 hours of power outages in 2024, nearly twice the annual average of the previous decade, EIA reported in December 2025.
• Major events such as hurricanes accounted for 80% of the hours without electricity in 2024.
• South Carolina customers averaged 53 hours of interruptions in 2024, the most of any state.
• The average customer’s longest outage grew from 8.1 hours in 2022 to 12.8 hours by mid-2025, J.D. Power’s survey found.
• Weather caused 80% of major US outages from 2000 to 2023, according to Climate Central’s analysis of federal reports.
• Hurricane Helene’s outages peaked at 4.6 million customers on September 27, 2024, and 96% had power back by October 8.
• Winter Storm Uri cut power to more than 4.5 million people in Texas in February 2021, some for as long as four days.
• Power interruptions cost the US economy about $44 billion a year in 2015 dollars, Berkeley Lab estimated in 2018.

How long do power outages last?

The average outage lasted 7.2 hours with major events and 2.1 hours without in 2024, counting utilities that report under the IEEE standard. EIA calls this measure CAIDI, the average number of minutes it takes to restore service after an interruption, and the gap between the two figures is the storm outages.

J.D. Power’s survey measures something different, the longest outage each customer experienced. In the first half of 2025, 45% of customers reported an outage.

If you live in the South, the survey found the longest outages averaged 18.2 hours, and the West came next at 12.4. Of the outages respondents reported, nearly half were due to extreme weather.

For you, that means an outage in a calm year runs about two hours on average, and a storm year can run far longer.

How many hours a year does the average customer lose?

EIA calls 2024 the year with the most hours without electricity in 10 years. The table gives each year’s average per customer for utilities that report under the IEEE standard. If you’re comparing a storm year with a calm one, the no-major-events columns are the baseline.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.1. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60. IEEE-method utilities reported 79.3% of customers in 2024.

Without major events, the yearly average has stayed around two hours since 2013. Major events move the total, as in 2022, when customers averaged five and one-half hours.

EIA’s 2021 article put 2020 at more than eight hours, the most since it began collecting the data in 2013, and the table above, from the 2024 edition, lists that year lower. In 2019 customers lost 3.2 hours to major events and 1.5 hours otherwise.

EIA’s 2018 article reported 7.8 hours for 2017, against 8.4 in the 2024 edition. The older articles and the 2024 edition give different figures for the same years, so this page uses the 2024 edition throughout.

Customers also lose power often. The average customer had 1.5 interruptions in 2024. In years with no major events the count barely moves from year to year, as the last column shows.

Which states lose power the longest?

South Carolina customers averaged 3,136.5 minutes without power in 2024, or 52.3 hours, the most of any state.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60, and average outage is EIA’s restoration time per interruption.

A state’s total can swing from year to year. Connecticut went from 93.7 minutes in 2014 to 3,033.8 in 2020 and back to 152.8 in 2024.

Maine’s worst year in EIA’s series was 2017, at 2,492.6 minutes.

Find your state in these tables and read its second column against its third. The gap between them is how much of your outage time came from major events.

Which states lose power the least?

Arizona, South Dakota, North Dakota and Massachusetts each averaged under two hours without power in 2024.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60. The District of Columbia, which isn’t a state, is left out of the ranking.

South Dakota and Wyoming rest on a smaller sample of customers, as the last column shows.

What are the biggest US power outages?

Hurricane Helene left nearly 6 million customers in 10 states without power in September 2024, more than any other storm in the table below. DOE’s region-wide peak of 4.6 million is the most customers out at one time, so the two counts measure different things.

Source: DOE Hurricane Helene Situation Report #12, Utility Dive on Milton, American Public Power Association on Ian, Insurance Journal on Beryl and PowerOutage.us on Fern. Milton’s count comes from PowerOutage.us.

Hurricane Milton left 3.4 million Florida customers without power on October 10, 2024. Hurricane Ian’s peak of 2.7 million Florida customers in September 2022 was down 85% by October 4. More than 2.6 million Texas customers lost power for days after Hurricane Beryl, and fallen trees caused many of those outages.

Winter Storm Fern knocked out power to about 1.1 million customers at its peak on January 25, 2026. During Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority conducted rolling blackouts of more than 5 GW of load.

Uri and the 2003 Northeast blackout were counted in people, so they stay out of the table. FERC found that Uri cut power to more than 4.5 million people in Texas, and freezing and fuel problems caused 75.6% of the unplanned generator outages. The 2003 blackout left over 50 million people without power for up to four days.

How long did the biggest outages take to fix?

Five days after Helene’s peak, 1.2 million customers were still without power, and rural cooperative leaders warned some areas could need weeks.

By the Sunday after landfall, about 900,000 Duke Energy customers in the Carolinas were still in the dark. Georgia Power had restored 1.3 million customers, more than 95% of those affected.

CenterPoint expected 98% restoration by the end of July 17, 2024, nine days after Beryl struck southeast Texas on July 8. Florida Power and Light restored nearly 1.3 million customers within 24 hours of Milton leaving the state, about two-thirds of those affected. After Ian, Florida’s public power utilities restored 99.99% of customers able to take service within six days.

On Sunday evening, January 25, 2026, about 899,000 customers were without power after Fern, and Mississippi needed nearly two weeks to reach 98% restoration. FERC and NERC staff found no planned power outages in January in ERCOT or the Eastern Interconnection.

What causes power outages?

NERC ranked weather, excluding lightning, as the number one cause of transmission outages on extreme days in 2025. The table splits weather-related major outages into five types.

Source: Climate Central, Weather-related Power Outages Rising. Climate Central counts major outages as events that affect at least 50,000 customers or 300 megawatts, using federal OE-417 reports.

The US had about twice as many weather-related major outages in 2014 to 2023 as in 2000 to 2009. NERC still calls major weather events the greatest risk to reliability, though 2025 was generally temperate.

For what aging lines and rising demand mean for reliability, read about the strain on the power grid.

How much do power outages cost?

Berkeley Lab estimated that sustained power interruptions cost the US about $44 billion a year in 2015 dollars, 25% more than its 2006 estimate after adjusting for the dollar year. The figure covers sustained interruptions across all customer classes.

How we compiled these numbers

We took the national and state figures from EIA’s Electric Power Annual 2024, released October 16, 2025, and the outage counts from DOE and from utility and trade-group reports. The national history uses the IEEE-method series that EIA’s own headline figure uses. The state tables use EIA’s any-method series, which covers more customers, so figures such as South Carolina’s can differ slightly from EIA’s article.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s county outage dataset covered 92% of customers by 2022 and doesn’t reliably capture outages under 15 minutes. Customer counts are meters, and the Uri and 2003 figures are people.

We’ll update the tables, chart and title year when EIA publishes the 2025 data, and when NERC follows its June 24, 2026 State of Reliability report with the next edition.

How long a backup plan should cover

In a year with no major events, the average customer loses about two hours. After Beryl, CenterPoint’s target for 98% restoration was July 17, nine days after landfall.

For what a home battery can carry through a gap like the second one, see battery backup for home power outages, and for a short one like the first, see portable power stations for short outages. Find your state in the tables above, note how far its all-events hours sit above its no-major-events hours, and size your plan to that gap.