Top household electricity statistics

• US homes bought 1.51 trillion kWh in 2025, 37.3% of all retail electricity sales.
• In 2022, Louisiana customers bought 14,774 kWh against 6,178 kWh in Hawaii, the highest and lowest of any state.
• About 89% of US homes used air conditioning in 2020, up from 57% in 1980.
• Devices that draw power around the clock add up to 5% to 10% of residential electricity use, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) says.
• EIA forecasts an average residential price of 18 cents per kWh for 2026, up about 37% from 2020, Utility Dive reports.
• Per-person home electricity use fell 5% between 2010 and 2020 after rising about 3% a year from 1960 to 2010.

How many kWh does a house use?

The answer shifts with the source. EPA’s calculator uses 12,194 kWh per home for 2022, from 1,541 billion kWh spread across 126.4 million homes. EIA’s FAQ puts the same year lower, at 10,791 kWh per utility customer, and its energy explainer says the average household uses about 10,500 kWh a year.

EPA divides by homes, while EIA’s sales figure divides by the customers that utilities bill. When you compare your house with an average, check which count it came from, and which year.

Daily use is the number a battery gets measured against, whether it’s a Powerwall or a portable power station for home backup. One 13.5 kWh Powerwall holds about half a day of an average home’s use, in nominal capacity. If you’re sizing backup power, the page on a home battery backup system covers what a battery can run.

What is the average kWh usage per month?

The average US home used 863 kWh a month in 2024, or about 28 kWh a day. Homes use far more electricity in some months than in others. US homes bought 168.0 billion kWh in July 2025 against 97.3 billion in April, in EIA’s preliminary monthly data.

Each row below is a total for all US homes together, so read the table for the shape of the year.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.1 (2025 values are preliminary).

July’s total was about 1.7 times April’s, so if your July bill runs far above your April bill, that matches the national pattern. The end-use table further down shows how much of a year’s use goes to cooling and heating.

Which states use the most electricity?

Louisiana’s residential customers used the most electricity in 2024, 1,201.8 kWh a month on average. Hawaii’s used the least, and Hawaiian Electric builds its typical residential bill around 500 kWh a month on Oahu, Hawaii Island and Maui and 400 kWh on Lanai and Molokai.

The table lists the ten states at each end of the ranking, with each one’s price and average bill.

Source: EIA, 2024 Average Monthly Bill, Residential (Table 5A, Form EIA-861).

Low use doesn’t mean a low bill. Hawaii uses less than half what Louisiana does and still pays the bigger bill, as the price column shows.

These are electricity purchases, so a home that runs on its own rooftop solar shows up as using less. EIA’s FAQ shows the size of the effect in Hawaii, where a 2020 survey put household use at 7,976 kWh against 6,446 kWh purchased.

How do home type and size change the number?

In EIA’s 2020 home survey, the largest homes used 15,475 kWh, more than twice the 6,800 kWh of the smallest. The survey reports energy in Btu, so the tables here convert it to kWh.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE2.1, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh.

Find your square-footage band in the table and you have a rough benchmark for your own bill. For scale, the median single-family home completed in 2025 had 2,142 square feet.

Type matters as much as size. A detached house uses about twice what an apartment in a large building does, and a mobile home uses about as much as a detached house.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE2.1, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh.

What uses the most electricity in a home?

Air conditioning is the biggest single use, at 19% of home electricity in 2020, with space heating and water heating at 12% each. Lighting and refrigerators come next.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE4.1, Table CE5.1a, Table CE5.1b and Table CE5.3a, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh. Shares are of 4,453 trillion Btu, the survey’s electricity total, and the last row is what the listed uses leave over.

EIA’s earlier survey put cooling at a similar share, 18% of household electricity use in 2015.

New homes lean electric. Among single-family homes completed in 2025, 56% were fueled with electricity. In the South, 63% had a heat pump. The page on electric heat pumps shows how those machines work.

A drafty house pushes up the heating share, and the guide to the sources of home heat loss shows where the heat escapes.

Small loads add up too. ENERGY STAR certified refrigerators are about 9% more efficient than models that only meet the federal minimum, and an ENERGY STAR electric clothes dryer saves about $210 in energy bills over its life. The devices that stay on all day are covered in what energy waste costs.

A car is the newest load. Homes that charged an electric vehicle at home used 2,363 kWh a year for it in 2020, and the Department of Energy’s worked example is a car that uses 27 kWh per 100 miles.

How has household electricity use changed over time?

Use per customer climbed from 8,978 kWh in 1984, peaked in 2010 and has drifted lower since.

Source: EIA, Historical state data, Form EIA-861, 1990 to 2009 file and 2010 and later file. Each figure is residential sales divided by residential customers.

EIA’s per-person numbers turn at the same point. Residential sales per person fell 5% between 2010 and 2020, to 4,437 kWh in 2020, after rising about 3% a year over the half century before.

Louisiana’s line stays high through the whole span, and Hawaii’s slopes down. Hawaii’s figures count purchases, so rooftop solar lowers them.

Total retail electricity sales, which include business and industry, kept growing. They grew 0.2% a year from 2010 to 2019 and then 1.1% a year from 2019 to 2025, LBNL found, and the faster growth came largely from commercial and industrial customers.

What does the average house pay for it?

The average bill for a US home was $142.26 a month in 2024, at 16.48 cents per kWh. LBNL found that the average residential bill was 2.4% of household spending in 2025. The report’s March edition measured total residential electricity costs against personal spending instead and got 1.25% for 2025, a figure EEI, the trade group for investor-owned utilities, passed along as 1.25 percent of household spending.

EIA’s 2023 analysis put the average monthly residential bill at $137 in 2022, up from $121 in 2021, before inflation.

EIA forecasts the 2026 average residential price at 18 cents per kWh, up about 37% from 2020, Utility Dive reports. At 18 cents a kWh, every 100 kWh your home uses costs $18.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that one in four low-income households spend over 15% of income on energy bills.

Where these numbers come from

We computed per-customer use by dividing EIA’s residential sales by its residential customers for each year. Monthly figures divide that by twelve. Daily figures divide it by the 366 days of 2024, which was a leap year, and come to about 28 kWh whichever way you count the year. We converted EIA’s home survey from Btu to kWh at its standard factor.

The 2025 monthly figures are EIA’s preliminary estimates, and EIA hasn’t published a 2025 customer count, so the annual figure stays at 2024. Survey-based figures describe 2020, the newest year with a published end-use breakdown, and EIA will publish 2024 consumption by end use in spring 2027.

How to find your own kWh number

Your bills already hold the answer. Add up a full year of kWh, divide by the months and compare that monthly average with your state’s row in the table above and with the size band that fits your home.

If you come out well over, start with cooling. Heating and water heating come next in the end-use table.

Top photo: 277volts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Cost of electricity per kWh by state, ranked

The ranking uses EIA’s Electric Power Monthly estimate of the average residential price in July 2026. EIA calculates the price by dividing revenue by sales, so it includes taxes and fees, and EIA calls the July values preliminary. Prices are usually highest in the summer, so a July figure runs above a yearly average. The table is refreshed after each EIA release, and the next one, with August data, is scheduled for October 23, 2026.

The table is ordered by price, with the US average in the last row.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, data for July 2026, preliminary. Missouri and New Mexico tie at 16.09 cents. The change columns are arithmetic on EIA’s figures.

Connecticut is the one large drop. Its regulator approved an interim decision to cut residential rates from May 1, 2026, including 4.3 cents per kWh for the average Eversource customer, by turning a public benefits charge into a credit that is scheduled to run through at least September.

Louisiana had the lowest price in July, but North Dakota had the lowest for January through July 2026, at 12.36 cents. The state at the bottom of the ranking depends on the period you pick.

The five most expensive states

Hawaii, California, Maine, Massachusetts and New York rank one through five in the July 2026 table.

1. Hawaii

Hawaii also tops the year-to-date ranking. Its customers averaged 46.28 cents per kWh from January through July 2026, against 41.08 cents a year earlier.

EIA says Hawaii’s prices are high mainly because most of its electricity is generated with petroleum fuels that have to be imported. Hawaiian Electric reports that 36.8% of the power it generated in 2025 came from renewables.

2. California

California’s year-to-date price was 33.25 cents per kWh for January through July 2026, second only to Hawaii. If you live there, your rate can include wildfire costs. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the state’s three large investor-owned utilities were authorized to include $27 billion in wildfire-related costs in retail prices from 2019 to 2023.

3. Maine

Maine’s July price was nearly a sixth higher than a year earlier. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s review of 2025 price changes lists storm-cost recovery and regional transmission costs for Maine, where Central Maine Power’s storm surcharge rose to 2.5 cents per kWh in 2025 from 1.8 cents in 2024.

4. Massachusetts

Massachusetts households used 570 kWh a month in 2024, about two-thirds of the US average, and still ran up the fourth-highest bill at $167.20. EIA said in May 2025 that residential prices in New England, where they were already high, could increase more than the national average.

5. New York

New York’s July price was nearly a seventh higher than a year earlier. New Yorkers used 571 kWh a month in 2024, the fourth lowest of any state, and their average bill was $139.53.

The five cheapest states

Louisiana, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota and Tennessee sit at the bottom of the July 2026 table. A low price doesn’t guarantee a low bill. Louisiana’s customers use more than twice as much grid electricity as those in Hawaii or California, and EIA estimated their average bill at $142 a month in 2024, nearly equal to the national average.

Average monthly electric bill by state

The average US household paid $142.26 a month for electricity in 2024, and Hawaii’s customers paid the most at $212.12. The table shows the ten states at each end of the ranking.

Source: EIA, Electric Sales, Revenue, and Average Price, 2024 data, Table 5A. Ranks run from 1 (highest bill) to 51 (lowest) across 50 states and DC. Figures are for 2024, the latest full year in this EIA report.

Price and bill don’t rank the same. Alabama’s customers used 1,143 kWh a month in 2024, against 863 kWh nationally. Their average bill of $173.50 ranked third, even though their price of 15.18 cents per kWh was below the US average of 16.48 cents.

EIA says Southeastern customers use more electricity because of summer air conditioning. An earlier EIA estimate, built from preliminary monthly data, put the 2024 US average bill at $144 and found the six smallest bills all in the Rocky Mountain region, and the final data in the table are slightly lower.

How the US average price has changed since 2001

The US average residential price was 17.30 cents per kWh in 2025 and 8.24 cents in 2000, so it has more than doubled in nominal terms.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review, Table 9.8. Prices are in nominal dollars.

Adjusted for inflation, the picture is flatter. EIA found that the average residential price rose by less than 1% from 2013 to 2023 in inflation-adjusted terms.

EIA’s September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts 18.2 cents per kWh in 2026 and 18.6 cents in 2027. For prices abroad, see electricity prices in other countries.

What pushed prices up in 2025

Natural gas delivered to power plants rose 36% in 2025 from its record low in 2024, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory counted gas as a driver of retail price changes in 21 states, with wholesale prices rising most in New England and New York.

In the PJM grid region, LBL found that retail prices rose 3.1 cents per kWh in DC and 2.0 cents in New Jersey between 2024 and 2025. LBL says that is in part due to higher PJM capacity auction prices.

PJM’s auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year cleared every zone at its $325 per MW-day cap. Utility Dive reported that the results reflected about 2 GW more forecast demand, largely from data centers, and that ratepayers should see little change in their electric bills when that delivery year starts on June 1, 2028.

Utilities requested or were granted $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025, according to the advocacy group PowerLines.

Utilities are also spending more on the wires to your door. EIA’s analysis of utility filings found that distribution spending has passed spending on transmission and production.

The studies cited here cover 2025, so they don’t explain each state’s July 2026 change.

Rising demand and aging wires sit behind some of these increases, and our look at why the US power grid is under strain covers how AI demand and old equipment are straining it. If you want a plan for outages, the page on whole home battery backup systems covers what they cost.

How utilities and retail choice change what you pay

Your utility’s role depends on your state’s market. In regulated markets, utilities are typically vertically integrated monopolies that generate, transmit and distribute electricity for their customers. In restructured markets, utilities that serve retail customers are only responsible for delivering electricity and other companies generate it.

EIA describes the split this way. In some states commissions fully regulate prices, and in others generators’ prices are unregulated while transmission and distribution prices stay regulated.

Many states restructured from the 1990s onward to create competition and lower costs. Retail choice sits on top of that. It lets customers buy electricity from competitive retail suppliers, and EPA says it isn’t widely available in most parts of the country. In Texas, about 85% of electricity consumers can choose their retail provider, including those in Dallas and Houston.

Even where you can choose, distribution and transmission, which make up nearly 40% of the average electric bill, are still recovered through rate regulation.

How to find your own rate on your bill

Your latest bill shows the total you owe and the kilowatt-hours you used. Divide the total by the kilowatt-hours and you have your all-in price per kWh, the same math EIA uses for the table. EIA’s 2024 US average works out the same way, $142.26 for 863 kWh, listed at 16.48 cents per kWh.

Compare your result with your state’s row in the table, and remember the table shows July, a summer month. If your price is close to your state’s but your bill is high, the difference is how much you use, and our look at how much energy the US wastes shows where it goes.

A heat pump needs a far lower COP to break even in Florida than in Michigan, so the answer turns on your state’s gas and electricity prices.

Top heat pump vs furnace statistics

• ENERGY STAR requires gas furnaces to reach 95% AFUE in the South and 97% in the North.
• In 8 of the 19 sample states, a best-available heat pump costs less to run than a 95% gas furnace, using EIA’s 2025 state electricity prices.
• DOE puts the average life of a gas furnace at 21.5 years.
• Heat pumps in DOE’s cold climate field tests delivered a median COP of 1.9 when the outdoor temperature was 0 to 5°F.
• AHRI members shipped 3,644,596 heat pumps and 3,247,426 gas furnaces in 2025.
• Gas central furnaces were the main heating equipment in 53.26 million US homes in 2020, against 16.13 million with a heat pump.
• On the 2023 US average grid, a high-efficiency heat pump emits about 70 lb of CO2 per million Btu delivered, against 123 lb for a 95% gas furnace.
• The federal 25C credit paid up to $2,000 a year for a heat pump, and it isn’t allowed on equipment placed in service after December 31, 2025.

Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a gas furnace?

Gas heat rose faster in price than heat-pump heat. Between 2016 and 2025 the cost of a million Btu of delivered heat from a 95% efficient gas furnace climbed 52.7%, against 37.9% for a best-available heat pump, by the table’s calculation.

COP is the heat a machine delivers per unit of electricity, and how a heat pump works is covered on its own page. The table uses two ratings. One is HSPF2 7.5, the federal minimum for a split-system heat pump. The other is HSPF2 11, the best available model in DOE’s purchasing example, and dividing a rating by 3.412, the Btu in a watt-hour, gives the seasonal COP.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, EIA, residential natural gas price, EIA, heat content of natural gas and EIA, Btu conversions. Costs are calculated from these figures in nominal dollars, with natural gas at 1,036 Btu per cubic foot for every year.

In the table, the high-efficiency heat pump cost less than the furnace in two of the ten years, and the entry-level one cost more in all ten.

To check your own house, multiply your power rate in cents per kWh by 2.93 to get dollars per million Btu at a COP of 1, then divide by the heat pump’s COP. Compare that with your gas price per million Btu divided by your furnace’s AFUE. The COP at which the two match is your break-even COP.

How does a heat pump compare with an electric furnace?

EIA counted 13.82 million US homes with an electric central warm-air furnace as main heating equipment in 2020.

In the table above, electric furnace heat costs more than twice as much as even a minimum-efficiency heat pump’s in every year. A heat pump typically needs about half the energy that other electric home-heating sources do, EPA says.

Which states favor a heat pump on running cost?

A heat pump at the best-available rating beats a 95% gas furnace on running cost in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Oregon and Tennessee, and the furnace stays cheaper in the rest of the table, going by EIA’s 2025 gas prices and the electricity prices below.

The last column is the seasonal COP a heat pump needs to break even with the furnace in that state. Compare it with the seasonal COP on a heat pump’s spec sheet, or work one out from its efficiency rating the way the running-cost section explains.

Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.B, February 2026 issue (2025 values preliminary), EIA average residential natural gas price by state and EIA heat content of natural gas. Costs are calculated from these figures for 19 selected states. States without a 2025 EIA gas price, Maine among them, are left out.

Michigan is the hardest case for a heat pump on running cost, and Florida the easiest. In Michigan the furnace is cheaper to run than both heat pumps in the table, and in Florida both heat pumps cost less than the furnace.

The American Gas Association, a gas industry trade group, finds gas cheaper in more places than this table does. Its January 2024 analysis says gas is cheaper to heat with in 41 out of 50 states when ENERGY STAR furnaces are set against ENERGY STAR heat pumps. NREL’s modeling of the whole housing stock found that 62% to 95% of households would see lower bills with a heat pump, but that count includes homes now heated with oil, propane and electric resistance.

For homes that burn gas, NREL’s lead author said that more than half would see a financial benefit, and the study’s median annual bill change for gas homes ranged from up $70 to down $380.

How much does a heat pump cost to install compared with a furnace?

Consumer Reports members surveyed in 2023 paid a median $8,348 to buy and install a heat pump, against $6,221 for a gas furnace.

Source: Consumer Reports, Heat Pump Buying Guide, updated March 2026, American Gas Association, January 2024, DOE FEMP, residential air-source heat pumps, DOE, consumer furnace standards rule and ENERGY STAR, when to replace.

The two sets of install prices agree on heat pumps and disagree on furnaces. The Consumer Reports median for a heat pump falls inside AGA’s range, and its gas furnace median sits well above AGA’s high end. The table names AGA because it’s a gas trade group.

A whole-home heat pump that replaces both the air conditioner and the heating system costs more. Rewiring America puts a whole-home install at $17,000 to $23,000. The range is for a 1,500 to 2,500 square foot home.

That figure covers two systems, so it isn’t a furnace-versus-heat-pump price.

The federal 25C credit paid up to $2,000 for a heat pump, and it’s not allowed on equipment placed in service after December 31, 2025. State and utility rebates aren’t covered here, so ask your installer which ones apply at your address.

Which lasts longer, a heat pump or a furnace?

A gas furnace lasts longer, on the estimates available. DOE estimates the average gas furnace lasts 21.5 years, while Consumer Reports says a heat pump generally wears out after 10 to 15 years.

DOE’s own cost model for air-source heat pumps assumes 15 years of life. None of these is a measured lifespan for heat pumps, so treat the gap as a planning range.

ENERGY STAR advises considering a replacement once a furnace is more than 15 years old and once a heat pump or air conditioner is more than 10.

How does a heat pump perform in cold weather?

DOE’s field tests of cold climate heat pumps found a median COP of 1.9 at 0 to 5°F. Across the temperature bins below 30°F the medians ranged from 1.6 to 2.7.

At that COP, heat from a heat pump costs about $26.69 per million Btu at the 2025 US average electricity price, against $15.59 for a 95% gas furnace. That figure is for one temperature bin in the field tests, so it isn’t a seasonal average.

EPA says air-source heat pumps are now more effective in colder climates, which it puts at 5°F and colder. The field tests used prototype cold climate units at a limited number of sites and left out periods with auxiliary heat or defrost, so your results depend on the model and the house.

Which one produces less CO2?

On the 2023 US average grid, a heat pump rated HSPF2 11 emits about 70 lb of CO2 per million Btu of delivered heat. A 95% gas furnace emits 123 lb per million Btu.

Source: EPA eGRID2023 summary tables and EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Figures are calculated from grid CO2 and combustion CO2 only. The furnace figure is EPA’s 0.0053 metric tons of CO2 per therm, converted to pounds and divided by the 95% efficiency.

The grid you’re on changes the answer. A minimum-efficiency heat pump emits more than the furnace on four grids in the table, among them RFC Michigan and MRO East. A high-efficiency unit emits less than the furnace on every grid except MRO East.

The table is a snapshot of the 2023 grid average. NREL modeled heat pumps over a 16-year life with several future grid paths, and Canary Media reported emissions cuts in every one of the 48 contiguous states.

The same modeling put the average household cut at 36% to 64%. AGA says a gas home can have a footprint 19% lower than an ENERGY STAR heat pump home, and its page doesn’t give a method.

Heat pump vs air conditioner

A heat pump cools a house in summer the way an air conditioner does and heats it in winter, and ENERGY STAR says heat pumps also provide cooling in the summer months.

Under DOE’s 2023 standards a split-system heat pump must reach 14.3 SEER2, while a split-system air conditioner needs 13.4, or 14.3 in the Southeast and Southwest. EIA’s 2020 survey counted 82.69 million US homes with central air conditioning, a figure that includes central heat pumps, and 21.43 million with window or wall units.

Source: AHRI, December 2020 statistical release, AHRI, December 2021 statistical release, AHRI, December 2023 statistical release and Contracting Business, AHRI’s December 2025 report. Units shipped by AHRI members each year.

Heat pumps outsold gas furnaces in 2020 and in each year from 2022 to 2025, and trailed in 2019 and 2021, going by AHRI’s shipments. In 2025 heat pumps were 47% of cooling equipment sales, RMI reports.

If your air conditioner or furnace is the next thing to fail, ENERGY STAR says that in most zones a heat pump can be installed as a drop-in replacement for either one.

When does a dual-fuel heat pump and furnace make sense?

A dual-fuel system pairs a heat pump with a gas furnace and switches between them at a set outdoor temperature. NREL’s housing-stock model describes the switchover temperature or balance point, where the system stops the heat pump and starts the furnace.

In that model, adding a dual-fuel heat pump cut total site energy use across the US housing stock by 9.3%. That’s a saving in energy use, and the figure says nothing about dollars or emissions.

The cold-weather section shows the logic for the switch. At the field median COP, heat from a heat pump costs more per million Btu than heat from the gas furnace in the tables above, so the furnace takes over below the switchover temperature.

A Minnesota case study paired a cold climate heat pump with an existing 80% efficient gas furnace and found it cost-neutral against the furnace alone. A reduced electric rate helped, because it lets the utility switch the home to gas at peak times. The study also projected emissions to rise in year one and fall below the baseline over the equipment’s life.

DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing a heat pump that can run at the same time as a gas furnace, but it’s an R&D project and not a product you can buy.

Where these numbers come from

The cost of delivered heat is calculated from EIA’s average residential prices. For gas, the price per thousand cubic feet is divided by the gas’s heat content, 1,036 Btu per cubic foot in the national history, and then by the furnace’s AFUE.

For heat pumps, the electricity price is multiplied by 293.08 kWh per million Btu, which is a million divided by 3,412 Btu per kWh, and then divided by the seasonal COP. State figures use EIA’s preliminary state electricity prices, and the emissions figures leave out upstream emissions and grid losses.

Your break-even COP before the next replacement

Your own bills settle it. Take the power rate in cents per kWh and the gas price from your bills, and work out the COP at which the two costs match. A heat pump whose seasonal COP is above that number costs less to run than your furnace at those prices.

Where your house loses heat matters too, and the page on how homes lose heat walks through the leaks. The page on US energy waste by sector breaks down where it goes, and the page on what a geothermal heat pump costs covers ground-source systems.

When your furnace or air conditioner fails, get one quote for a gas furnace and one for a heat pump. Then compare each heat pump’s seasonal COP, which the running-cost section shows how to work out from its efficiency rating, with your break-even COP.

Top photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top natural gas statistics

• Dry natural gas production hit a record 39 trillion cubic feet in 2025, more than 4% above 2024.
• The US produced 25.6% of the world’s natural gas in 2025 by energy content, more than any other country, in Energy Institute data.
• Power plants were the biggest users, burning 13.05 Tcf in 2025, or 38.9% of all US gas use.
• LNG exports (liquefied natural gas, gas chilled into a liquid for shipping) reached 5.51 Tcf in 2025, up from 0.19 Tcf in 2016.
• In January 2026, natural gas prices averaged $7.72 per million Btu during Winter Storm Fern.
• The average US home paid $15.34 per thousand cubic feet in 2025, up from $10.78 in 2020, before inflation.
• Burning gas releases 45% less CO2 than burning coal for the same energy, a share computed from EIA’s emission coefficients.
• Aerial surveys of six US oil and gas regions found methane losses averaging 2.43% of covered gas production, roughly three times the government inventory estimate.
• The Department of Energy (DOE) counted 18.65 Bcf/d of LNG export capacity operating and 15.05 Bcf/d under construction on December 31, 2025, where Bcf/d means billion cubic feet per day.

What is natural gas?

Natural gas is a fossil fuel whose largest component is methane, a molecule with one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms. Wikipedia notes it’s also called methane gas or fossil gas.

On its own, natural gas is colorless, odorless and tasteless, so gas companies add mercaptan to give it a distinct and unpleasant odor, which helps people detect leaks in pipelines. If you’ve smelled gas in a kitchen or near a meter, that smell was the additive.

Where does natural gas come from, and where is it found?

Natural gas comes from the remains of plants and animals that piled up in thick layers millions of years ago, and pressure and heat later changed some of that buried material into natural gas.

Large-scale shale gas production began around 2000 in the Barnett Shale of north central Texas, and EIA says the Marcellus shale in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia is the largest source of shale gas. For how those wells are drilled, see how fracking works, and the shale gas page covers how that output grew.

Oil wells bring gas up too. In the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico, gas production is driven primarily by associated gas produced during crude oil extraction, and EIA forecasts 29.2 Bcf/d there in 2026. Gas taken from coal seams is called coalbed methane, and it made about 2% of US dry gas production in 2022.

Texas produced 12.66 Tcf of marketed gas in 2025, which is 29.3% of the US total. Pennsylvania came second.

Source: EIA, Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals and Production, marketed production by state. Shares are computed from the US total on the same page, and the ten states listed make up 94.5% of it.

Marketed production is a wider EIA measure than the dry production used in the other tables, which is why the US total in the table is 43.23 Tcf. New Mexico’s output rose from 1.97 Tcf in 2020 to 4.13 Tcf in 2025, more than double.

How much natural gas does the US produce, use and export?

The US used 33.52 Tcf of natural gas in 2025 and exported 8.97 Tcf, counting pipelines and LNG. Imports were 3.16 Tcf, so net exports came to 5.80 Tcf by subtraction.

Source: EIA, Dry Natural Gas Production, Natural Gas Total Consumption, Natural Gas Exports and Liquefied Natural Gas Exports, annual data released September 30, 2026. EIA publishes volumes in million cubic feet, and the table divides them by one million. Exports include pipeline gas and LNG.

In the table, dry production passes consumption in 2017 and stays above it. LNG exports rose from 0.19 Tcf in 2016 to 5.51 Tcf in 2025.

EIA’s explainer page says the US has been a net exporter since 2016, but its annual tables show imports of 3.01 Tcf in 2016 against exports of only 2.34 Tcf in the table above, and 2017 was the first year exports came out ahead.

On EIA’s marketed-gas measure, which runs higher than dry gas, production reached a record 118.5 Bcf/d in 2025, and EIA forecasts 122.5 Bcf/d in 2026.

What is natural gas used for?

Electric power was the largest use of natural gas in 2025, at 13.05 Tcf. Industry came next.

Source: EIA, Natural Gas Consumption by End Use, 2025. Shares are computed from the total on the same page. EIA treats the latest year’s power-sector volumes as preliminary.

In July 2026, power plants took 49.39 Bcf/d, the highest daily rate for any month in EIA’s data, which starts in 2001. In homes, gas supplied about 43% of the energy used in 2020.

Trade groups count customers differently from EIA and don’t date their figures. The American Gas Association (AGA) says more than 189 million Americans and 5.8 million businesses use natural gas, and the Natural Gas Supply Association says nearly 70 million US homes are heated with it. EIA’s 58% figure comes from a survey of homes, so it’s the one to compare against.

Vehicle fuel is the smallest line in the table. The natural gas vehicles page covers where it’s used.

How much LNG does the US export?

US LNG exports averaged 17.4 Bcf/d in the first half of 2026, 23% more than in the first half of 2025. LNG is natural gas chilled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, where it becomes a liquid 600 times smaller than the gas.

Reuters reported, citing preliminary LSEG data, that the US shipped 111 million metric tons of LNG in 2025, the first country to pass 100 million. WorkBoat reported 2025 exports of 15.1 Bcf/d, a record.

In March 2026, disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz cut off 20% of global LNG supplies, mostly from Qatar, according to EIA. The IEA expects global gas demand to fall about 0.5% in 2026.

Cheniere says its Sabine Pass terminal had exported more than 3,460 LNG cargoes totaling about 240 million tonnes as of July 31, 2026. Golden Pass, the ninth US LNG terminal, shipped its first cargo on April 22, 2026, and EIA lists its full nominal capacity at 2.0 Bcf/d.

Source: US Department of Energy, Liquefied Natural Gas Exports snapshot, December 2025. Capacity is the volume DOE lists as operating or under construction on December 31, 2025. The under-construction rows leave out Corpus Christi Stage 3, which DOE counts in its 15.05 Bcf/d total, and Golden Pass has shipped since.

How much does natural gas cost?

The Henry Hub benchmark spot price averaged $3.52 per million Btu in 2025. It was $6.45 in 2022 and $2.19 in 2024. Over the same two years the residential price went from $14.75 to $14.50 per thousand cubic feet.

Source: EIA, Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price, Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Electric Power delivered prices, annual, in nominal dollars. Henry Hub is in dollars per million Btu and the delivered prices are in dollars per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). EIA’s annual Henry Hub series has no value for 2013, so the table starts in 2014.

The residential price was 42% higher in 2025 than in 2020 before inflation, a share computed from EIA’s price table.

In January 2026, natural gas prices averaged $7.72 per million Btu as cold weather increased heating demand, reduced production and led to record storage withdrawals during Winter Storm Fern. EIA’s February forecast for the 2026 average was $4.30, and its September forecast is $3.43 for 2026 and $3.28 for 2027.

What are the pros and cons of natural gas?

EIA calls natural gas a relatively clean-burning fossil fuel. Its coefficients put the carbon dioxide from burning gas at 52.91 kilograms per million Btu, against 95.99 for coal.

Source: EIA, Carbon Dioxide Emissions Coefficients by Fuel. The figures count combustion only and leave out methane that leaks before the gas is burned.

Lower carbon dioxide per unit of energy is one advantage, and a record 39 trillion cubic feet of domestic production in 2025 is another. The drawbacks are the carbon dioxide that gas still releases and the price swings in the table above. Then there’s methane, and EIA says some natural gas leaks into the atmosphere from wells and storage tanks as well as pipelines and processing plants. For how gas compares with coal and oil more broadly, see the fossil fuels page.

How much methane leaks from natural gas?

Methane is a strong greenhouse gas. EPA estimates its global warming potential at 27 to 30 over 100 years, though methane emitted today lasts about a decade in the air.

EPA’s 2022 estimates put 60% of oil and gas methane in production and 19% in transmission and storage. MIT Technology Review reported that EPA estimates roughly 1% of oil and gas produced leaks as methane.

Aerial measurements point higher than the inventory. A Nature study covering six US regions found losses ranging from 0.71% to 9.77% of covered gas production, the low end in a gas-rich region and the high end in an oil-focused one. Lead author Evan Sherwin says around 1% of well sites can make up over half the total methane emissions. Nature published a correction in May 2026, and the authors say the main results are unchanged.

Worldwide, the IEA estimates that oil, gas and coal operations emit 124 million tonnes of methane a year, including 36 million from natural gas, and that more than 35 million tonnes could be avoided at no net cost. The methane leaks page covers where the gas escapes.

Where these numbers come from

We converted EIA’s volumes from million cubic feet to trillion cubic feet and rounded to two decimals, and every share in the tables is computed from the totals on the same EIA page.

The world share comes from Energy Institute data published by Our World in Data in terawatt-hours of energy, a different basis from the volumes above. EIA’s next Short-Term Energy Outlook is due October 6, 2026, and the next Natural Gas Monthly comes October 30, 2026, and the forecasts and monthly figures here will move with them.

The LNG terminals already under construction in Texas and Louisiana

DOE counted 15.05 Bcf/d of LNG export capacity under construction at the end of 2025, with Rio Grande, Golden Pass, Louisiana LNG, CP2 and two phases of Port Arthur on the list. EIA’s September forecast has US LNG exports averaging 17.4 Bcf/d in 2026 and 18.6 Bcf/d in 2027.

Further out, EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2026 projects exports rising from 15 Bcf/d in 2025 to more than 30 Bcf/d by 2050 in most of its cases.

If you heat with gas, the residential column in the price table above shows the average rate US households paid each year, so it’s the line to compare your own bill against.

Top photo: BogTar201213, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

The figures below come mostly from EIA and other federal and state agencies, and they describe 2024 or 2025 unless a line says otherwise.

Top fracking statistics

• Tight-oil resources produced 9.35 million barrels a day of US crude in 2025, EIA estimates.
• US crude oil production set a record 13.6 million barrels a day in 2025.
• The Permian Basin’s shale and tight formations made 6.0 million barrels a day of crude oil in December 2025, which was 44% of the US total.
• Gas made up 40% of Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian output in 2024 when measured in barrels of oil equivalent, up from 29% in 2014.
• EPA estimated that 25,000 to 30,000 new wells were drilled and fractured in the US each year from 2011 to 2014.
• Pennsylvania operators spud 444 new wells in 2025, up from 309 in 2024.
• Baker Hughes counted 599 US rigs in the week published on September 25, 2026, and 541 of them were horizontal.
• US natural gas production was 104 billion cubic feet a day in 2023, 75% above Russia’s.
• A study of 2015 data put US oil and gas methane emissions at 13 million metric tons a year, 60% above EPA’s estimate.
• Texas has required operators to post fracking chemicals on FracFocus since February 1, 2012.

What is fracking?

Fracking is a completion technique, meaning it happens after the well has been drilled. Pumps force fluid down the well until the rock cracks, and the sand in the fluid wedges open the expanding fractures.

Fracking and horizontal drilling are separate steps that work together. Hydraulically fractured horizontal wells were 69% of all US oil and gas wells drilled in 2016.

Commercial shale gas began in the Barnett Shale in Texas, where Mitchell Energy had developed a fracturing technique that produced commercial volumes of shale gas by 2000.

How does fracking work?

A fracked well reaches formations hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface. Modern shale wells then run sideways through the rock, and in the Permian Basin the horizontal section averaged more than 10,000 feet in the first nine months of 2022, against under 4,000 feet in 2010.

Longer sections came with more wells. Operators in the Permian brought on 4,524 new horizontal wells in 2021, up from 350 in 2010.

On the well pad, water, proppant and additives are blended together and pumped to a manifold, where high pressure pumps transfer the fluid to the frac head. Water tanks hold the supply, and flowback tanks hold the liquid that returns to the surface afterward.

Liberty Energy, a frac service company, says its SLXRRY sand delivery system enables reduced truck traffic and road wear, plus less dust and fewer emissions. The company’s release gives no measurements.

A typical fracking job is 85.02% water and 14.20% proppant, according to FracFocus. The remaining 0.78% is ten additive types, from a gellant at 0.5% down to a biocide at 0.001%.

Source: FracFocus, What Is Fracturing Fluid Made Of?. FracFocus calls this a generalized breakdown of a typical job and says there is no standard formula.

How much US oil comes from fracking?

Tight-oil resources produced about 64% of US crude oil in 2023, according to EIA. In 2025 the share was 68.4% when computed, from EIA’s estimate of tight oil and its count of US field production.

Source: EIA, Today in Energy, March 15, 2016, EIA FAQ on tight oil, EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook Table 10b, September 2026 and EIA field production of crude oil. The 2025 share is 9.35 divided by 13.662.

The rows don’t form one trend line. In 2015 EIA counted about 300,000 fractured wells that made more than 4.3 million barrels a day, about half of US crude. That count sorts oil by whether the well was fractured, while the 2023 and 2025 rows sort it by the rock it came from.

The next table gives total US crude output for scale. It covers every kind of US oil well, fracked or not.

Source: EIA, U.S. Field Production of Crude Oil, annual, released September 30, 2026.

How much US natural gas comes from fracking?

Shale gas wells brought up 35.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2024, which is 76.5% of the 45.9 trillion cubic feet withdrawn from all US wells, computed from EIA’s two figures. These are gross withdrawals.

Source: EIA, U.S. Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals from Shale Gas and EIA, U.S. Natural Gas Gross Withdrawals, converted from million cubic feet and rounded to 0.01 trillion cubic feet. EIA’s shale series ends in 2024.

By the same computation, shale wells were 8.1% of the total in 2007 and 21.7% in 2010.

Oil wells make gas too. In the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian, gas was 40% of output in 2024, up from 29% in 2014, measured in barrels of oil equivalent.

EIA’s outlook tables count something different, dry shale gas by formation, so they shouldn’t be set against gross withdrawals. For how shale changed gas prices and power plants, see how shale gas changed the US energy market.

Where does fracking happen in the US?

The Permian Basin leads oil, and its shale and tight formations made 44% of US crude in December 2025. The Marcellus leads shale gas in the table below, which counts by rock formation, and formations cross state lines.

Source: EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook Table 10b, September 2026. Rows may not sum to the totals because EIA rounds each line independently.

EIA ranks Appalachia, which holds the Marcellus and Utica, second among the world’s gas-producing areas at 33 billion cubic feet a day in 2023.

The state table below counts all production in each state, including wells that were never fracked.

Source: EIA, Crude Oil Production by state and EIA, Natural Gas Marketed Production by state, annual 2025 values.

Texas leads both columns. Pennsylvania ranks second for marketed gas among these nine states and last for oil.

Where is fracking regulated or banned?

Pennsylvania’s Act 13 was signed into law on February 14, 2012 and created an impact fee on unconventional gas wells. In 2026 the state’s utility commission distributed $243.8 million for the 2025 reporting year, and $133.8 million of it went to counties and municipalities directly affected by drilling. If drilling is happening in your Pennsylvania county, your local government is likely among the recipients.

Texas took a different route. Its Railroad Commission implemented a chemical disclosure rule on February 1, 2012, and the rule text names FracFocus, developed by the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, as the registry where operators post. The same rule lets suppliers claim a chemical’s name as a trade secret.

New York went further. In December 2014, Governor Andrew Cuomo banned fracking across New York State, which holds large gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale. In February 2021, all four Delaware River Basin states voted to ban the practice in the watershed, citing scientific evidence that fracking has polluted drinking water, surface water and groundwater.

Source: Railroad Commission of Texas, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, ProPublica and WHYY.

What are the benefits of fracking?

The US has led the world in natural gas production since 2009, according to EIA, and the history table above shows shale wells behind that growth.

Burning natural gas makes fewer emissions of nearly all air pollutants and carbon dioxide than burning coal or petroleum products for the same energy. EIA puts coal at more than 200 pounds of carbon dioxide per million Btu and fuel oil at more than 160 pounds. That comparison counts the burning of the fuel and leaves out leaks, which are covered below.

Some of that gas fuels vehicles, and the page on vehicles that run on natural gas covers them.

Does fracking cause earthquakes?

USGS says reports of hydraulic fracturing causing felt earthquakes are extremely rare. It adds that most induced earthquakes are not directly caused by fracking and that the rise in central US earthquakes is primarily caused by disposal of waste fluids that are a byproduct of oil production.

If you live in the central United States and feel a tremor, USGS points to wastewater disposal wells as the main cause. The page on how much water fracking uses covers disposal in detail.

What does fracking do to water, air and health?

EPA’s 2016 assessment found scientific evidence that activities in the hydraulic fracturing water cycle can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances. In its sample, 13 of 151 characterized spills of fracturing fluid reached a surface water body.

A 2013 study in northeastern Pennsylvania found methane concentrations six times higher and ethane 23 times higher at homes within a kilometer of a shale gas well. If your water comes from a private well that close to a drilling pad, that’s the distance where the researchers saw the difference. The finding covered a subset of wells.

On air, EPA says the oil and natural gas sector is the largest industrial source of US methane emissions. A study of 2015 data put the sector’s methane at 13 million metric tons a year, 60% more than EPA’s inventory estimated.

That covers the whole oil and gas system, so fracking is one part of it. The guide to methane leaks from US oil and gas goes through the measurements.

Researchers who analyzed more than 1.1 million Pennsylvania births from 2004 to 2013 found a 25% higher probability of low birth weight for mothers living within 1 km of a fracking site. They found little evidence of effects beyond 3 km. If your home is within a kilometer of a well pad, that’s the group the study describes. It’s one study in one state.

Where these numbers come from

We compiled the figures from EIA data pages and outlooks, other federal agencies, FracFocus, state regulators and peer-reviewed studies, and we checked the linked pages in September 2026.

Some numbers are computed. Each shale share of gross withdrawals divides EIA’s shale gas figure by its all-wells figure. The 2025 tight oil share divides EIA’s tight oil estimate by its US field production figure. The gas history table converts EIA’s million cubic feet into trillions.

Shares of dry or marketed gas use different denominators and will differ from the gross withdrawals share. EIA’s fractured-well count and its tight-oil count use different definitions, so the oil table labels each row. The state table covers all production in each state, including wells that were never fracked.

What the rig count and EIA’s forecasts say about the next wells

Baker Hughes counted 455 oil rigs and 135 gas rigs in the US in the week published on September 25, 2026.

EIA’s January 2026 outlook forecast that US crude oil production would dip 2% to 13.3 million barrels a day in 2027, and it said low crude oil prices reduce operators’ incentives to drill.

For gas, EIA’s February 2026 outlook forecast marketed production of 120.8 billion cubic feet a day in 2026 and a record 122.3 in 2027. About 69% of that comes from Appalachia, Haynesville and the Permian. EIA’s April 2026 outlook expected LNG exports to average 17.0 billion cubic feet a day in 2026.

FracFocus describes its database of chemical disclosures as a public resource for consumers wishing to explore this data. If a rig goes up near you, that’s where to look up what went into the well, provided its operator posted the ingredients.

Top renewable energy statistics

• Renewables generated 33.8% of the world’s electricity in 2025 and overtook coal at 33.0%, which Ember calls a first in 100 years.
• Solar output rose 30% to 2,778 terawatt-hours in 2025, and solar passed wind as a world electricity source for the first time.
• Wind and utility-scale solar made 17% of US electricity in 2025, or 19% once rooftop solar is counted.
• Hydropower remains the world’s largest source of renewable electricity, and IHA counted 1,469 gigawatts installed at the end of 2025, pumped storage included.
• Solar power cost a global average of $44 per megawatt-hour in 2025, 89% below its 2010 cost.
• IRENA reports that more than 90% of the utility-scale renewable projects commissioned in 2025 cost less than the cheapest new fossil alternative.
• The IEA forecasts that world renewable capacity will double by 2030, adding 4,600 gigawatts.
• US developers plan a record 86 gigawatts of new generating capacity in 2026, and solar is 51% of that plan.
• Renewable energy employed at least 16.6 million people worldwide in 2024, according to IRENA and the International Labour Organization.

What is renewable energy?

Renewable energy is energy from sources that are naturally replenishing but flow-limited, and EIA says the resources are virtually inexhaustible but limited by their availability. The UN describes it as energy from natural sources replenished at a higher rate than they are consumed, with sunlight and wind as its examples.

EIA lists the major types as biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind and solar. Biomass includes wood and wood waste as well as biofuels.

Nonrenewable sources are the opposite. EIA says they’re mined or extracted from the earth, and crude oil is its example.

Nuclear needs its own answer. EIA considers uranium a nonrenewable energy source, even though it’s a common metal found in rocks worldwide. Ember reports it separately too, with nuclear at 8.9% of world electricity in 2025, and it adds nuclear to renewables only under a separate label, low-carbon power, which reached 42.6%. The outlook for nuclear power is covered on its own page.

What are the main renewable energy sources?

The main renewable sources are solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal and marine energy. The table shows how much of each was installed at the end of 2025.

Source: IRENA, 2026 renewable capacity report. Hydropower excludes pure pumped storage, which IRENA counts separately. Capacity measures what has been built and says nothing about how much power it generated.

Hydropower and wind are nearly level in the table. Geothermal and marine energy are small, and a section below covers them.

How much of the world’s electricity is renewable?

Renewables’ share of world electricity rose from 18.04% in 2001 to 33.78% in 2025, counting solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy and other renewables and leaving nuclear out.

Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, full release CSV, downloaded September 30, 2026. Ember amends this file, so a later download can differ slightly.

The world share was flat through most of the 2000s and has risen every year from 2008 to 2025. The US series is bumpier, and it stayed below the world’s in every year.

How much US electricity is renewable?

EIA counts renewables at about 24% of US utility-scale electricity in 2025, up from about 12% in 1990, and utility-scale means plants of 1 megawatt and up.

Utility-scale plants made 464,000 gigawatt-hours of wind power and 296,000 of solar power in 2025. Small-scale solar added about 93,000 gigawatt-hours, and counting it lifts wind and solar to 19% of US generation. If you have panels on your roof, your system sits in that small-scale group.

Ember counts small-scale solar in its US total, which is why its figure runs higher than EIA’s. The table gives the US and world split by source.

Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, which includes small-scale solar. Nuclear is shown as a comparison and isn’t part of the renewable total.

Hydropower leads worldwide and wind leads in the US. On its own utility-scale basis, EIA puts US hydropower at about 5.6% of electricity and 23.1% of the renewable total.

Why the renewable share depends on what you measure

Renewables are a bigger share of world power capacity than of the electricity generated, and a much smaller share of all energy. All the figures in the table are right, and they answer different questions.

Source: Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026, EIA, Electricity in the U.S., IRENA, 2026 renewable capacity report, Electrek, reporting FERC data, Our World in Data, using Energy Institute data and EIA, U.S. energy facts.

Total energy includes fuel for heat and transport. EIA reports renewables at about 9% of US primary energy consumption in 2025, a record, while the Energy Institute series gives 7.2% for the US and counts energy differently. Biomass shows how wide the gap can get. It supplied about 5% of US primary energy in 2025, yet the Ember table above puts it at 1.02% of US electricity.

How fast are solar and wind growing?

A photovoltaic cell turns sunlight directly into electricity, with no turbine in between. IRENA counts 511 gigawatts of new solar in 2025 against 159 of new wind.

Ember counted 647 gigawatts of solar added in 2025, measured in direct current, so it shouldn’t be compared with IRENA’s figure. Wind has three counters. GWEC reports 165 gigawatts of new wind in 2025, a 40% rise. Ember counts 167 gigawatts.

In the US, FERC’s data show utility-scale solar at 12.2% of installed capacity, ahead of wind at 11.9% at the end of 2025. Two pages go deeper on each, US solar growth and wind power growth.

What about hydropower, geothermal, biomass and the smaller sources?

In a hydropower plant, water flows through a pipe and turns the blades of a turbine that spins a generator. IHA counted 28 gigawatts of new hydropower in 2025, including about 11.7 gigawatts of pumped storage. Pumped storage has passed 200 gigawatts worldwide, and DOE puts the firm capacity of US hydropower, its guaranteed minimum output, at over 24 gigawatts.

Geothermal plants use water or steam at 300 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit from wells that are sometimes 2 miles deep. Fervo Energy says its Cape Station in Utah reached First Power on September 24, 2026, the first utility-scale enhanced geothermal project to do so, with 900 MW fully contracted. For the engineering, see how enhanced geothermal systems work.

Of the biomass energy the US used in 2025, 53% was biofuels and 39% was wood, and only 7% went to electric power.

Marine energy is tiny. The US has no commercially operating tidal power plants, and the waves off US coasts hold a theoretical 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours a year, which is potential and not what devices can capture. Solar thermal plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and make steam, and some store heat for the evening.

What does renewable energy cost?

Lazard puts unsubsidized US utility-scale solar at $40 to $98 per megawatt-hour in 2026.

On the scale of your power bill, that converts to 4.0 to 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Lazard says unsubsidized renewables remain the most cost-competitive new build, though the cost of electricity is rising for every type of generation. IRENA’s world averages show which sources got cheaper.

Source: IRENA, Renewable power generation costs in 2025. Global weighted averages of new projects in 2025 dollars. Solar PV’s 2025 average was unchanged from 2024. Cost of electricity is not the price a buyer pays.

Adding a gigawatt of solar took about $0.7 billion in 2025 against about $3 billion in 2015, the IEA says.

What are the pros and cons of renewable energy?

One limit is the grid. California’s grid operator curtailed 3.4 million megawatt-hours of wind and solar in 2024, and solar was 93% of it. In the US, about 2,061 gigawatts of generation and storage was waiting for a grid connection at the end of 2025, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. How that plays out is the subject of the page on the limits of the renewable grid.

Batteries are one answer. US utility-scale batteries reached 43.6 gigawatts at the end of 2025, and operators plan 54 gigawatts more over the next two and a half years.

Renewables also bring jobs and low emissions. The world had at least 16.6 million renewable energy jobs in 2024, and DOE’s survey counted 359,400 US solar power generation workers in 2025, 3% fewer than in 2024. Over a full lifecycle, onshore wind has a median of 11 grams of CO2-equivalent per kilowatt-hour in IPCC’s 2014 assessment, and coal has 820.

Source: IPCC, Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group III, Annex III, Table A.III.2. Lifecycle emissions include building and fuel supply. Hydropower’s range is the widest.

Where these numbers come from

World electricity shares come from Ember and US shares from EIA, and the two count differently by design. EIA counts utility-scale plants, while Ember adds small-scale solar and IRENA counts capacity. We converted Lazard’s dollars per megawatt-hour to cents per kilowatt-hour by dividing by ten. Ember revises its data file, so a later download can differ slightly.

The 2026 US build plan

EIA says US developers plan 86 gigawatts of new capacity in 2026, a record if they finish it, and 53 gigawatts were added in 2025.

Source: EIA, Today in Energy, February 20, 2026. Plans are what developers report, and they can slip.

Solar carries the plan and batteries come second. The IEA expects solar to account for almost 80% of the 4,600 gigawatts of new renewable capacity by 2030. Before you compare any two renewable energy shares, check whether each one counts electricity, capacity or total energy.

Top heat pump statistics

• Heat pumps heated 48% of new single-family houses completed in 2025, up from 23% in 2000.
• AHRI members shipped 3,644,596 air-source heat pumps in 2025, 11.6% fewer than in 2024.
• EIA’s 2020 survey counted 16.13 million US homes with a heat pump as their main heating equipment.
• The average US residential electricity price was 17.30 cents per kWh in 2025, up from 16.48 cents in 2024.
• NREL’s analysis found that 62% to 95% of US households would see a drop in their energy bills with a heat pump, depending on its efficiency.
• Heat pump sales in 21 European countries rose 13% in 2025, to 2.9 million units.
• ENERGY STAR certified geothermal heat pumps use 61% less energy than a standard model.
• Heat pump water heaters made up 4% of US residential electric water heater sales in 2023, according to ENERGY STAR data that RMI cites.

What is a heat pump and how does it work?

Like a refrigerator, a heat pump uses electricity to carry heat from one place to another, and EPA says it typically uses about half the energy of other electric home-heating sources.

An air-source unit pulls heat from the outside air into your house in winter. A geothermal unit pulls it from the ground, where soil about 30 feet down stays between 50°F and 59°F all year. Across most of the US, that’s warmer than winter air and cooler than summer air.

The ratio of heat delivered to electricity used is called the coefficient of performance, or COP. A machine’s COP changes with the weather, and the cold-weather section below gives the measured numbers.

What does a heat pump look like?

A mini-split heat pump is mounted directly onto an interior wall or ceiling with an accompanying outdoor unit, according to ENERGY STAR, and it needs no ductwork.

A geothermal system adds a loop of buried pipe, which DOE says can run vertically or horizontally underground.

What types of heat pump systems are there?

EPA calls air-source heat pumps the most common choice and the ductless mini-split the most affordable and adaptable type.

Geothermal heat pumps use the ground’s steady temperature instead. ENERGY STAR says certified models save nearly $830 a year and more than $9,500 over 15 years against a standard model, and geothermal heat pump installation costs have their own page.

How efficient is a heat pump?

Heat pump labels carry two seasonal ratings, HSPF2 for heating and SEER2 for cooling, both counted in Btu per watt-hour. In the Federal Energy Management Program’s northern-states example, a heat pump rated HSPF2 7.5 uses 11,551 kWh a year for heating and cooling, and the best available model uses 7,394 kWh.

Because a kilowatt-hour holds 3,412 Btu, dividing an HSPF2 rating by 3.412 gives its seasonal COP.

Gas furnaces use a different yardstick, and the cost section below explains it. The page on energy waste in the US breaks down how much gets wasted and where it goes by sector.

How does a heat pump do in cold weather?

A conventional heat pump’s heating capacity drops below its rating once outdoor air falls under 40°F, and only a fraction of it remains in the teens.

DOE says cold climate heat pumps operate with greater capacity and efficiency at outdoor temperatures below 32°F. In DOE’s field tests of cold climate prototypes, the median COP was 1.9 at 0 to 5°F once defrost and backup-heat periods are set aside.

ENERGY STAR certifies cold climate models by testing them down to 5°F. Mitsubishi Electric markets an outdoor unit that offers year-round warmth even at -13°F, and that is the maker’s own claim.

How many US homes have a heat pump?

EIA’s 2020 survey found 16.13 million US homes using a heat pump as main heating equipment, plus 1.06 million using a ductless one, out of 123.53 million homes.

Natural gas central furnaces were the main equipment in 53.26 million homes in 2020, more than three times the heat pump count.

Source: EIA, 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Table HC6.6. The share column is calculated from that table.

If you live in a hot-humid climate, 28.4% of homes heated mainly with a heat pump in 2020, against 3.7% in the coldest climate group.

Electricity was the main heating fuel for 42% of US households in 2024, and natural gas for 47%. That’s a broader measure than heat pumps, because it counts electric resistance heat too.

New houses tell a faster story. Heat pumps went into 483,000 of the 1,005,000 new single-family houses completed in 2025, against 490,000 that got forced-air furnaces.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing, Type of Heating System Used in New Single-Family Houses Completed.

The split by region is wide. In 2024, the National Association of Home Builders found that 82% of new homes started in the South Atlantic had a heat pump as their primary heating system, against 7% in the East North Central. About 54% of all new homes started that year used electricity as the primary heating fuel, against 41% for natural gas.

Do heat pumps outsell gas furnaces?

Manufacturers shipped 12% more heat pumps than gas furnaces in 2025, RMI reports, 3.6 million units against 3.2 million.

Source: AHRI year-end shipment releases. The 2019 and 2020 rows come from the December 2020 release, 2021 from the December 2021 release, 2022 and 2023 from the December 2023 release, and 2024 and 2025 from the December 2025 release as reported by Contracting Business.

Furnaces led in 2021, when AHRI counted 4,008,894 gas furnaces against 3,916,766 heat pumps. Heat pumps led in 2020 and in every year from 2022 to 2025. AHRI’s counts cover US shipments from its member manufacturers, so they say nothing about installations.

RMI says a change to new refrigerants in 2025 may have contributed to higher 2024 heat pump shipments as manufacturers rushed to ship older-refrigerant systems. Through April 2026, heat pump shipments were up 1.2%, to over 1.3 million units, Utility Dive reported.

In Europe, France led 2025 with 528,000 heat pumps sold, and Germany’s sales grew 50%. The European Heat Pump Association counts 29.3 million in use across the 21 countries it tracks.

What does a heat pump cost to run?

At 2025 US average prices, a heat pump rated HSPF2 11 delivers heat for about $15.73 per million Btu. A gas furnace rated 95% AFUE delivers it for $15.59, and AFUE is the share of the fuel’s heat that ends up as space heat instead of being lost.

Source: Calculated from EIA electricity prices, EIA natural gas prices, EIA Btu conversion factors and the AFUE minimums in ENERGY STAR’s furnace criteria. The HSPF2 levels are the examples in the efficiency section above.

If you heat with gas, a heat pump needs a seasonal COP of about 3.25 to match a 95% furnace on fuel cost at the 2025 gas price. Resistance heat costs more than three times as much as a heat pump at that COP.

At the median cold-weather COP of 1.9 from DOE’s field tests, the same math puts a heat pump at about $26.69 per million Btu, above every furnace row.

Bill savings depend on what a home burns now. In a simulation by NREL and LBNL researchers, air-conditioned homes that heat with oil or propane, or with electric resistance, saw median savings of $300 to $650 a year, Canary Media reports. For gas-heated homes, median annual bills ranged from a $70 increase to a $380 decrease.

How we priced the heat

We started from EIA’s 2025 US residential averages of 17.30 cents per kWh for electricity and $15.34 per thousand cubic feet for natural gas. We converted with 3,412 Btu per kWh and 1,036 Btu per cubic foot, then divided the electricity cost by a COP for heat pump rows and the gas cost by AFUE for furnace rows. The 80% row is our assumption for an older furnace, since ENERGY STAR sets 95% and 97% minimums for certified gas models. Prices are US averages, so local rates move every row.

What does a heat pump cost to install?

Rewiring America prices a whole-home system at $17,000 to $23,000. That range is for houses of 1,500 to 2,500 square feet, and the median in the nonprofit’s own model is $19,500.

If your electrical panel is full, ask whether a quote includes an upgrade. An LBNL paper puts the cost of replacing electrical service equipment such as panels at $1,000 to $30,000 and finds that heat pumps generally add less than their rated electrical demand to a home’s peak. The finding draws on 957 sub-metered homes and 9,093 Vermont homes with cold climate heat pumps.

What is a heat pump water heater?

A heat pump water heater applies the same trick to a hot water tank, and DOE says it can be two to three times more efficient than a conventional electric water heater. PNNL’s Building America Solution Center gives the same range, and ENERGY STAR also calls the product a hybrid electric water heater.

The water heater is responsible for about 17% of the total energy use in the average home, DOE’s building science site says.

What to ask before you buy a heat pump

Ask the installer for the model’s COP in the coldest weather your winters reach, and compare it with the cold-weather numbers above.

Where your house loses heat sets how much heat pump you need, and the page on heat loss in the home lists where it escapes, from air leaks to leaky ducts.

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

Top fossil fuel statistics

• World energy supply passed 600 exajoules in 2025, up 1.7% on 2024, according to the Energy Institute.
• The world used 103 million barrels of oil a day in 2025, 1.3% more than in 2024.
• Coal fell from 37% of US energy use in 1950 to 9% in 2025.
• Researchers at the Global Carbon Project projected fossil CO2 emissions of 38.1 billion tonnes in 2025, a record high.
• Carbon dioxide in the air at Mauna Loa averaged 427.55 ppm in August 2026, up from 425.48 ppm a year earlier.
• Global fossil power generation fell 38 TWh in 2025, the first year without a rise since 2020.
• The IMF counted $725 billion in explicit fossil fuel subsidies in 2024.
• Brent crude went above $100 a barrel in March 2026 after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz.

What are fossil fuels?

Fossil fuels come in three types, and all three began as the remains of plants and animals. Over time, pressure and heat changed some of that buried material into coal and some into oil and gas.

Coal holds the energy of plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago in swampy forests. Crude oil formed from animals and plants, called diatoms, that lived millions of years ago in a marine environment.

The table sets the three fuels side by side.

Source: Our World in Data (OWID) on energy use and OWID on CO2 by fuel, which build on the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026 and the Global Carbon Budget 2025. Emission coefficients come from EIA and US shares from EIA. The exajoule and share columns are arithmetic on the Energy Institute series. EIA rounds each US share, so the three fuels add to 83 while EIA’s fossil total is 82.

Oil is the biggest of the three by energy at 201.0 exajoules in 2025. Coal is the biggest by CO2, at 15.81 billion tonnes in 2024.

How much of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels?

Fossil fuels supplied 86.2% of world primary energy in 2025, down from 95.7% in 1975.

The table gives world use of coal, oil and natural gas in exajoules, a unit of energy.

Source: OWID on global primary energy use, built on the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026 and converted from terawatt-hours to exajoules.

Natural gas use grew fastest of the three, from 87.5 exajoules in 2001 to 150.7 in 2025.

The Energy Institute counts world coal use up 0.7% and the IEA counts it up about 0.4%. For total energy, the IEA counts 1.3% growth against 1.7% in the Energy Institute’s review.

Which countries depend on fossil fuels the most?

Saudi Arabia got 99.4% of its primary energy from fossil fuels in 2025, the highest share in the table, and Norway got 46.9%.

Source: OWID on fossil fuel share of energy, built on the Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026.

The table’s US figure comes from the Energy Institute’s data, while EIA’s own count for 2025 is 82%.

What are fossil fuels used for?

Transportation takes the largest share of US petroleum, 66.6% in 2022, according to EIA. The American Petroleum Institute, an oil and gas trade group, puts transportation fuels at 68% of US petroleum product demand in 2024.

EPA says over 94% of the fuel used for transportation is petroleum based.

Electricity is another use. About 60% of US electricity came from fossil fuels in 2023, so if you live in the US, most of the electricity behind your bill that year came from a fossil-fueled plant.

Worldwide, coal alone made 33.0% of electricity in 2025, behind renewable energy sources at 33.8%, Ember found. Solar power rose 636 TWh to 2,778 TWh in 2025, a 30% increase.

What happens when fossil fuels are burned?

Burning fossil fuels releases CO2, and a short ton of coal gives off 1,735.85 kilograms of it.

For the same amount of heat, coal releases 95.99 kilograms of CO2 per million Btu and natural gas 52.91, which puts coal at about 1.8 times gas.

Three groups gave three totals for 2025. The Global Carbon Budget paper projects 38.1 billion tonnes of fossil CO2, including cement carbonation. The Energy Institute counts 35,806.2 million tonnes from the energy sector, and the IEA counts nearly 38.4 billion tonnes of energy-related CO2. The three totals cover different sets of sources.

Natural gas caused 85 million of the 185 million tonnes by which the IEA says combustion emissions rose in 2025.

The same research puts what’s left of the 1.5°C carbon budget at 170 billion tonnes of CO2, about four years at 2025 emissions. The IPCC found that existing fossil fuel infrastructure would emit more CO2 over its lifetime than 1.5°C pathways allow.

How much fossil fuel is left?

US operators reported about 46 billion barrels of proved crude oil and lease condensate reserves at year-end 2024, 1% less than a year earlier. Proved natural gas reserves fell 3% to 584 trillion cubic feet.

Proved reserves are operators’ estimates of what can be recovered under existing economic and operating conditions, so they’re not a count of everything in the ground. For how shale changed US supply, see shale gas in the US.

OWID’s series from EIA lists 1,165.9 billion tonnes of proved coal reserves worldwide for 2023, the same figure it shows for 2022.

How much do fossil fuels cost?

Brent crude averaged $69.14 a barrel in 2025, and the table shows what oil and gas cost each year since 2014 in nominal dollars.

Source: EIA, Europe Brent Spot Price FOB, EIA, Cushing WTI Spot Price, EIA, Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price. EIA’s annual gas table has no 2013 value, so this table starts in 2014.

Prices jumped in 2026 when Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, pushing oil above $100 a barrel in March, the highest since 2022. The strait normally carries about one-fifth of global oil supplies.

The IEA agreed to release 400 million barrels from emergency stocks, the largest coordinated drawdown in its history. EIA estimates Brent averaged $102.93 in the second quarter of 2026.

EIA’s September outlook forecasts Brent averaging $91 a barrel in 2026 and $74 in 2027. If you drive, EIA forecasts regular gasoline at $3.84 a gallon in 2026 against $3.10 in 2025, a difference of 74 cents on every gallon you buy.

Henry Hub gas averaged $6.45 per million Btu in 2022 and $3.52 in 2025. For what moves oil prices, see oil prices and OPEC.

What are the pros and cons of fossil fuels?

The main advantage is a lot of energy in a small tank. A gallon of diesel holds 128,488 Btu, and a gallon of gasoline with ethanol blended in holds 112,114 to 116,090.

Another is jobs. The American Petroleum Institute says the US oil and gas industry supported 10.6 million jobs and contributed $2.1 trillion to the US economy in 2023.

Cost is a mixed argument. Lazard’s 2026 analysis puts new combined-cycle gas at $51 to $129 per megawatt-hour, unsubsidized. It puts new utility-scale solar at $40 to $98. Those are unsubsidized costs of building and running new plants, a different measure from the price on your bill.

Then there’s health. A 2023 BMJ study estimated 5.13 million excess deaths a year from air pollution caused by fossil fuels, using 2019 data. A Harvard-led study of 2018 put the figure at more than 8 million. The two studies cover different years and use different models.

Subsidies are the last piece. The IMF counted $725 billion in explicit subsidies in 2024 and $6.7 trillion in implicit ones, which are mostly environmental costs that prices leave out. The page on fossil fuel subsidies goes through them.

How we worked out these numbers

We took each fuel’s use from Our World in Data’s copy of the Energy Institute’s 2026 Statistical Review and converted terawatt-hours to exajoules at 277.78 per exajoule, since one terawatt-hour is 3.6 petajoules. Each fuel’s share is its use divided by the world total of 600.3 exajoules, which we summed from the same series.

The emissions totals for 2025 are projections or estimates, and EIA’s prices for 2026 are forecasts. We couldn’t verify a current world total for oil and gas reserves from a source that opens freely, so the reserves section gives US figures for those two fuels.

Two outlooks for coal, oil and gas to 2050

The IEA’s Current Policies Scenario in its 2025 outlook has oil and gas demand growing to mid-century, with coal declining before 2030. Its Stated Policies Scenario has oil demand flattening by the end of the decade and gas growing into the 2030s.

ExxonMobil’s outlook has oil and natural gas making up more than half of world energy supply in 2050, and expects the world to use 30% less coal in 2050 than in 2025. Both are scenarios.

To see how coal’s share of US energy fell, read why US coal power keeps declining. For what shale drilling means for local water, see fracking water use.

Top wind turbine statistics

• Dongfang Electric’s 26-megawatt test turbine, installed in 2025, has a 310-meter rotor and 153-meter blades, according to the company.
• The largest turbine running at sea is a 20-megawatt machine that China Three Gorges commissioned in early 2026.
• New turbines worldwide averaged almost 5.5 megawatts in 2024, up 9% from 2023.
• The average new offshore turbine worldwide reached 10.3 megawatts in 2025, the first year that average passed 10 megawatts.
• In Europe, the average new onshore turbine rose from 4.6 to 5.2 megawatts between 2024 and 2025.
• Revolution Wind, off Rhode Island and Connecticut, finished installing all 65 of its 11-megawatt turbines in September 2026.
• The US wind fleet averaged a 33.5% capacity factor in 2023, and projects built in 2022 reached 38.2%.
• Onshore wind power cost a global average of $33 per megawatt-hour in 2025, down 71% since 2010.
• A small turbine that can power one home has a capacity of about 10 kilowatts, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

How big is a new US wind turbine?

The average new US turbine had a 136.7-meter rotor and a 106-meter hub in 2024, and rotor diameter has grown in every period since 1998. The table gives the yearly averages for new land-based turbines.

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Energy Technology Data Update, 2026 edition. The 2025 row is partial: rating and rotor are known for 94% of installed projects and hub height for 75%, so it shouldn’t be compared with 2024.

Rotors kept growing. In 2024, 54.6% of new turbines had rotors of 130 meters or more, up from none in 2017.

What are the biggest wind turbines in the world?

The biggest turbine reported running in 2026 is Dongfang Electric’s 26-megawatt unit, which Dongfang says began sending power to the grid at a test base in Dongying, China, on October 29, 2025. It’s an offshore-class model on a land test site, and the rating is the company’s figure. Dongfang first rolled out the nacelle in October 2024, before any turbine stood.

Source: offshoreWIND.biz on Dongfang, SASAC, POWER on Siemens Gamesa, offshoreWIND.biz on China Three Gorges, offshoreWIND.biz on Mingyang and New Atlas, POWER on CSSC Haizhuang, offshoreWIND.biz on the first offshore 16 MW turbine, Vestas, POWER on Sany, offshoreWIND.biz annual overview. Status as of September 2026.

Siemens Gamesa’s prototype and Dongfang’s unit stand on land test sites, and Mingyang’s test unit lost two blades in December 2024. CSSC Haizhuang unveiled its 18-megawatt design in January 2023.

Are offshore turbines bigger than onshore ones?

Yes. Europe’s new offshore turbines averaged 10.7 megawatts in 2025, against 5.2 onshore, roughly twice the size. The table lines up each average with the region and the year it covers.

Source: US Department of Energy and NREL, Offshore Wind Market Report, 2024 edition, GWEC, 2024 supply-side data, GWEC, Global Offshore Wind Report 2026, WindEurope, 2025 statistics, GWEC, 2025 supply-side data. The DOE figures cover installations worldwide, and the 2025 all-types figure is GWEC’s installed capacity divided by its turbine count.

The 9.7-megawatt average for 2023 comes from the DOE and NREL offshore report and covers installations worldwide. WindEurope counts turbines that began sending power in Europe, while GWEC counts turbines installed worldwide, so the two averages aren’t directly comparable.

GWEC counted 28,395 new turbines and 178 gigawatts installed in 2025, which works out to about 6.3 megawatts per turbine.

Turbines going into US offshore projects are smaller than the Chinese models listed above, as the next table shows.

Source: Vineyard Wind, offshoreWIND.biz on Revolution Wind, offshoreWIND.biz on Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Empire Wind.

If you live on the coast between Massachusetts and Virginia, these are the machines going into the water off your shore. Coastal Virginia’s first turbine went up in January 2026, and the project was 81% complete on July 31, 2026.

How long can wind turbine blades get?

The longest blade reported is 153 meters long, on Dongfang’s 26-megawatt test unit.

Source: offshoreWIND.biz annual overview, offshoreWIND.biz on China Three Gorges, POWER on Sany, Vestas, Port of Rotterdam.

Why do bigger rotors pay off?

Bigger rotors pay off because they catch more wind for each kilowatt of generator, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says a lower rating per rotor area should raise capacity factor. That’s the share of its maximum output a turbine delivers over a year. A longer blade sweeps a wider circle of air, so the same generator sees more wind.

Engineers call that rating per rotor area specific power. It fell from 393 to 237 watts per square meter on new US turbines installed from 1998 and 1999 through 2023.

If a wind farm has gone up near you since 2023, its turbines most likely have big rotors, since DOE found that 98% of new turbines in 2023 had rotors 115 meters or wider. The page on wind turbine efficiency covers what that does to a turbine’s output.

How much does wind power cost?

Bigger turbines lower the cost of a wind farm because fewer turbines are needed to generate the same energy, DOE says.

IRENA reports 2025 costs of $33 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind and $78 for offshore, and says cheaper equipment and installed costs were offset by a higher cost of capital and slightly lower capacity factors. IRENA doesn’t separate out the effect of turbine size.

Source: IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2025, executive summary.

How did wind turbines get from 12 kilowatts to 26 megawatts?

Charles Brush built a 12-kilowatt wind turbine in Cleveland in the 1880s, and Case Western Reserve University dates it to 1888. The table follows the story from there to Dongfang’s test unit.

Source: US Department of Energy, Case Western Reserve University, IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki, NASA, OSTI, Renewable Energy World, offshoreWIND.biz on the Haliade-X, offshoreWIND.biz on the first offshore 16 MW turbine, SASAC.

The Smith-Putnam turbine ran for 1,100 hours before a blade failed. Sources disagree on its size, since IEEE’s history wiki titles its page on the machine 1.5 megawatts and the table uses DOE’s 1,250 kilowatts. NASA switched on Mod-0 on October 29, 1975.

Why can’t onshore turbines just keep growing?

Roads set the limit. NREL’s 2014 transportation study found US roads generally cap a single-piece blade at 53 to 62 meters, and DOE says blades can’t be folded or bent once they’re built. Tower sections are generally limited to 4.3 meters wide, so they fit under overpasses.

If you’ve been stuck behind a truck hauling one blade around a highway curve, that’s the limit at work. By rail, NREL puts the ceiling for a single-piece blade at 75 meters.

Those limits describe US roads and rails, and they don’t bind everywhere. Sany installed a 15-megawatt onshore turbine with a 131-meter blade in Jilin, China, in October 2024.

How big are home wind turbines?

A small turbine that can power one home has a capacity of about 10 kilowatts, and DOE defines small turbines as anything from 20 watts to 100 kilowatts.

Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Distributed Wind Energy Technology Data Update, 2025 edition.

If you’re pricing a home turbine, $6,680 per kilowatt means a home-size system would cost about $66,800 installed, and that average rests on a small sample. Small turbines in PNNL’s 2024 sample ran at a 16% capacity factor, well below the 24% for midsize and large ones.

Where these numbers come from

Two figures are computed from the sources above. The 2025 world average turbine size is GWEC’s installed capacity divided by its turbine count, and the installed cost of a home-size system is PNNL’s cost per kilowatt scaled up to a home-size unit. The 2025 US figures are partial, so hub height isn’t compared between 2024 and 2025 and the chart leaves that point blank. GWEC counts turbines installed and WindEurope counts turbines that began sending power, so their averages differ by design.

Where Coastal Virginia and Empire Wind stand

The last of Coastal Virginia’s 176 turbines is expected to go up by the end of 2027. Empire Wind 1’s plan calls for 54 Vestas turbines rated at 15 megawatts each, for New York.

For what these projects cost and where they stand, see the page on offshore wind power. For how much wind the US has built so far, see wind power in the US.

Heating and cooling make up 52% of a home’s total energy use, EIA found, so those leaks show up directly on your bill every month. Space heating alone is the largest single piece of that, 46% of total energy consumption in single-family homes in 2015. Every leak below cuts into that slice of your bill.

Air leaks let conditioned air escape

Warm air rises and pushes out through gaps at the top of a house, an attic hatch, a recessed can light, a gap around a flue. Cold air gets pulled in low down, around sill plates and rim joists. Building scientists call this the stack effect, and it pulls hardest on the coldest days, exactly when a house needs to hold on to its heat.

The EPA models the fix on a typical 1,700-square-foot house built between 1970 and 1989. Its target is a 25% cut in total air infiltration from sealing gaps around the attic and foundation, plus around windows and doors, on a modeled house that starts out with 23% of its duct system air already leaking.

Combined with adding insulation, sealing air leaks can cut 15% off your heating and cooling costs, or 11% off your whole bill. How much of that lands in your pocket depends on your climate zone, from 5% in the warmest zones up to 16% in the coldest.

The attic and walls lose heat without enough insulation

Walls and rim joists make up more than 40% of a house’s total exterior envelope area, the Department of Energy notes, so thin or gapped insulation there covers a lot of surface. The trade group representing insulation manufacturers estimates that 90% of US homes are under-insulated, though that figure comes from an industry source with a stake in insulation sales.

How much insulation a house needs depends on climate zone. Under the 2021 building energy code, ENERGY STAR’s retrofit guidance calls for R30 to R60 in the attic depending on the zone. Find your own zone in the table below and see whether your attic already clears it.

Source: ENERGY STAR, “Insulation R-Values”, based on the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code.

Windows lose heat through the glass and the frame

A window loses heat straight through the glass by conduction, and around a loose sash or frame by air leakage. The glass side is rated by U-factor, which for windows on the market ranges from about 0.15 to 1.1. The lower the U-factor, the less heat moves through the glass, and a single pane of old glass sits at the leaky end of that scale.

Standing next to an old single-pane window in winter feels colder than the room’s thermostat setting would suggest. That’s radiant heat loss, the cold glass pulling warmth from a body nearby even before any air moves.

Swapping out a window like that for an ENERGY STAR certified one can cut your household energy bills by an average of up to 13% nationwide. A separate Department of Energy resource guide puts the range at 6% to 13% in utility bill savings for the same switch. More than 85% of windows sold in the US are ENERGY STAR certified, so a lot of the easy replacement gains are already banked into homes built in the last decade or so.

Ducts lose conditioned air before it reaches a room

In a typical house, 20% to 30% of duct system air leaks out before it heats or cools a room, through loose connections and gaps at the plenum. That leakage alone can cut a system’s efficiency by as much as 20%. Even a newly installed furnace or heat pump still loses 10% to 30% of its output to duct leakage, so the fix is in the ducts, not the equipment.

If your ducts run through an unconditioned attic or crawlspace, that lost air is heating or cooling a space you never use, on your dime. A 2.5-ton air conditioner moves 1,000 cubic feet of air a minute through the ducts, easy math for what leakage costs in cooling terms. With 20% duct leakage, it misplaces about 6,000 Btu an hour, roughly half a ton of cooling, before that air ever reaches a room.

Technicians test duct leakage against ANSI/RESNET/ICC Standard 380, and size a full duct replacement to the industry’s Manual D standard, which now has its own section on how leaks change a system’s performance.

Aerosol duct sealing, a technology Lawrence Berkeley National Lab licensed out for commercial use, seals 70% to 90% of duct leaks with a 10-year warranty without opening up walls or ceilings.

Floors and basement walls lose heat too

An uninsulated basement wall can be responsible for up to a third of an average home’s heat loss on its own, according to a Department of Energy-funded Building America study from 2003, revised in 2007. Basement walls sit behind the finished part of a house, so they’re an easy place to skip. A basement or crawlspace with bare concrete or block walls in your own house fits that same up-to-a-third estimate for heat leaking out.

A cold floor over an unheated crawlspace works the same way a cold window does, pulling heat out of the room above it long before anyone touches the thermostat. The floor above an unconditioned crawlspace or basement needs the same climate-zone range ENERGY STAR gives for attics, from R13 up to R38, shown in the table above.

What sealing and insulating are worth on a real bill

The federal Weatherization Assistance Program has run these fixes on real, low-income households since 1976, a useful check on the estimates above. Participating households save $372 or more a year on average, and the program now reaches about 32,000 homes annually. It has helped more than 7.2 million families since it started, real households whose bills back up the modeled numbers above. Skip the sealing and insulating in your own house, and you’re leaving something close to that $372 a year on the table.

A thermostat setback costs nothing and works before any sealing or insulation happens. Lowering the thermostat 7 to 10 degrees for eight hours a day can save up to 10% on annual heating and cooling costs. Sealing and insulating are the same fixes behind Energy Collective’s look at where household energy goes to waste. Once the easy leaks are sealed, a geothermal heat pump is the next lever worth pricing out for the equipment itself.