Solar Surpasses Coal in Texas | Reading and Podcast Picks — Jan. 13, 2026
ERCOT's changing resource mix; large load queue forecasting; data center energy use during emergencies; and power trends to watch in 2026.
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Texas passed a major milestone last year, as coal dropped to fourth — behind gas, wind, and solar — in what it contributes to the ERCOT grid. As this Houston Chronicle story notes, the milestone would have been unthinkable a decade ago, but Texas has a competitive, energy-only market, and it’s been clear for years that this is where the market is going.
Perhaps more significantly, the 2025 Demand and Energy Report that ERCOT published last week (which you also can find here) shows that wind, solar, and nuclear power combined to provide 46% of the electricity on the ERCOT grid last year. That percentage of zero-emission electricity will likely expand further this year — even in the face of anti-energy attacks from Washington — as demand continues to rise and renewables continue to provide the fastest, cheapest power on the grid.
Solar farms contributed 67,800 gigawatt-hours of electricity from January to December, according to newly released data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the power grid operator for most of the state.
In comparison, power plants burning coal supplied 63,000 gigawatt-hours of power to the ERCOT grid last year, according to the grid operator’s data.
Annual power generation from solar usurping coal reflects the momentum of Texas’ ongoing energy transition — even as the Trump administration and some Texas Republicans try to throw up roadblocks against renewable energy’s rapid rise.
Solar, in particular, has grown at a breakneck pace: In 2019, solar supplied such a negligible amount of power to Texas’ grid that ERCOT didn’t even include it as a separate category in its annual pie chart of power generation resources. Now, solar power is the third-largest contributor to the ERCOT system — only behind second-place wind and first-place natural gas.
Coal, meanwhile, has dropped to number four.
The Fight Over Making Data Centers Power Down to Avoid Blackouts | Wall Street Journal
Grid operators across the country are scrambling to meet the skyrocketing energy demand of data centers. In Texas, regulators are creating rules to manage data center demand under Senate Bill 6, which the Texas Legislature passed last year. As ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas noted in the Houston Chronicle, the law “requires data centers to disconnect in phases at the grid operator’s discretion during a severe grid emergency. ‘If a data center connects onto our grid and the grid gets tight, they have to turn off before we (have rotating outages),’ Vegas said.
