Utah’s solar generation eclipsed all other electricity sources for the first time ever in May, the culmination of a slow but steady years-long shift away from coal. Energy experts are calling it a win for the environment and the state’s economy.
Photovoltaic panels in Utah produced nearly 1 terawatt hour in May 2026. That represented nearly a third of all electricity generated in the state that month, according to data from Ember, a global energy think tank. Natural gas generated 32 percent, coal generated 28 percent, and wind 2 percent.
“The trend of more and more solar in Utah is wonderful news for air quality, it’s wonderful news for the climate, and it’s wonderful news for jobs and the economy,” said Dan Schroeder, a physics professor at Weber State University who regularly checks energy data.
Schroeder attributes the trend to several large solar farms coming online in recent years. The 2,500-acre Green River Energy Center in the central part of the state became operational this spring, and includes 400 megawatts of solar generation and 400 megawatts of battery storage. Excelsior Energy Capital’s Faraday Solar project in Utah County, the state’s second-largest county, started providing up to 685 megawatts for the Meta data center there last fall. The Elektron Solar Project, an 80-megawatt photovoltaic farm, began sending electricity to Salt Lake City, Park City, and Summit County in June 2024.
Solar also supports nearly 8,000 jobs in Utah, according to the latest information from the Solar Energy Industries Association. The state is home to 132 solar companies, including 54 solar developers and 23 solar manufacturers. Investors committed $1.5 billion to Utah’s solar market in 2025 alone.
Oil and gas extraction, by comparison, accounted for 1,291 jobs in the state in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Coal mining accounted for 1,059 in 2023, the most recent year the bureau has data for that industry. Utah had another 1,905 jobs in coal and petroleum product manufacturing last year.
The rise of solar power has helped the state wean itself off a dependence on coal. In 2017, coal generated between 64 percent and 78 percent of electricity in Utah, depending on the month. By 2023, it started accounting for less than half of the state’s power sources in certain times of the year. This spring, it was less than a third.
Electricity generation is complicated, however, and solar won’t represent a third of Utah’s portfolio every month. But with its sunny, dry climate, “Utah still has room to grow its solar percentage,” Schroeder said.
He pointed to California, which saw nearly 51 percent of its electricity generation come from solar panels in May, the most recent month that Ember has data — showing Utah has much more room to grow.
“We’re going to see milestones like this increasingly happen,” said Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst with Utah Clean Energy.
About 51 percent of the new utility-scale electricity generation added to the country’s grid is expected to come from solar this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The country is likely to add another 43.4 gigawatts of solar, 24.3 gigawatts of battery storage, and 11.8 gigawatts of new wind power in 2026, compared to just 6.3 gigawatts of natural gas generation and zero new coal capacity.
Some of Utah’s electricity gets exported to other states, and some of its solar farms serve a single customer, like the project in Utah County that has a contract with Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook.
Mitchell pulled the numbers from the state’s largest electricity provider, PacifiCorp, which is the parent company of Rocky Mountain Power. Turns out, another renewable energy source has seen a surge in generation in the region — wind power.
Wind blew past all other energy sources in PacifiCorp’s portfolio for Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho in December and January for the first time, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“Wind plus solar is on a tear right now,” Mitchell said. “We may have achieved liftoff.”
And the two power sources complement each other, Mitchell said, since wind generation is highest in the winter months, and solar produces the most electricity in the summer.
Most of PacifiCorp’s wind generation comes from facilities in Wyoming, according to Jona Whitesides, a spokesperson with Rocky Mountain Power. He said the recent sweep in wind power likely comes from the company’s investment in new turbines, including 400 megawatts added to the grid last fall at PacifiCorp’s Rock Creek II facility.
“A lot of days we are using more wind,” Whitesides said. “There are no fuel costs there; it’s essentially free.”
The Trump administration is phasing out tax incentives for wind and solar projects, however, calling them “expensive and unreliable.” But renewables combined with battery storage increasingly produce some of the cheapest, cleanest, and most consistent energy sources in the country, Mitchell said, and are not subject to the price spikes and uncertainty brought by global politics. What’s more, burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, which is mostly composed of methane, creates pollution and contributes to a warming planet.
Mitchell said he keeps a running list of the ways a warming West is hurting Utahns at home. A record-hot spring followed by a cold snap caused fruit farmers to lose their crops, for example. Utah also saw virtually zero snowpack over the winter, setting the stage for an explosively bad wildfire season and uncertainty about the state’s future water supply. Emergency room visits from tick bites are also on the rise in the West, Axios reports, as milder winters and earlier onset of warm temperatures help the insects thrive.
“In order to reduce those impacts in the future, we need to be reducing our emissions,” Mitchell said. “And we need to be doing it faster.”
Still, the shift in priorities at the federal level caused PacifiCorp to abandon plans to build more wind and solar projects in the next two decades, according to its latest Integrated Resource Plan update. The pivot has earned the utility criticism from renewable advocates like Utah Clean Energy.
Whitesides called the plan a “snapshot in time” that is constantly revised depending on energy costs, along with federal and state policies.
“It didn’t make financial sense to move forward with new renewable resources at this given time,” Whitesides said. “In two years, we could have a different administration. It may bring back more renewables.”
