Texas is doing its part to harness wind and solar energy

AUSTIN (KXAN) — 2022 was a good year for the generation of carbon-free energy.

A Climate Central report shows an 16% increase in both solar power and wind power across America. That increase was due to a 26% increase in solar growth, while wind increased by 74%.

Solar power, by definition, is clean because it derives its energy from the sun. The United States is fortunate to have some of the richest solar sources in the world.

The power of the wind also helps to produce electricity through wind turbines that uses the wind's force to turn it in to mechanical power.

Daily forecasts of both of these power sources were studied by Climate Central's WeatherPower tool and found the following positive numbers, numbers that show how America can produce electricity using these pure energy sources.

Solar and wind power were responsible for more than 238 gigawatts of electricity this past calendar year. That's an increase of 13 gigawatts from 2021. A gigawatt (GW) is a unit of electrical power equal to one billion watts. A better way to look at a gigawatt is that one GW provides enough energy to power 750,000 homes.

The report also found that a 27% increase in solar energy and a 73% increase in wind energy for 2022 lead to a combined generation of 683,130 gigawatt-hours (GWh), an overall increase of 16% from the previous year. A gigawatt-hour is equivalent to 1,000,000 kilowatt hours and are used to measure the output of larger electricity power stations.

All this combined lead to there being enough power from wind and solar from January to December 2022 to power approximately 64,000,000 American homes. And while that number is impressive, here another. The United States Energy Information Administration reports that at the average retail price of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour the revenue recognized from the energy sources equates to $82 Billion.

Solar capacity is the maximum output generated by a power plant. It is measured in any of three ways ... kilowatt, megawatt, or gigawatt. Here, Texas was one of the leaders increasing capacity from 11,038 megawatts in 2021 to 12,702 megawatts last year. Solar generation, the conversion of the sun's energy to electricity, increased in the same time frame from 16,610,426 megawatt hours in 2021 to 22,863,146 megawatt hours.

Texas was also the leader in wind generation. The state's wind capacity increased from 34,331 megawatts in 2021 to 37,365 megawatts last year. As for wind generation, our state was the leader going from 110+ million megawatt hours to just under 130 million megawatt hours.

Electricity generation from solar and wind in the U.S. collectively grew 16% from 2021. Solar accounted for 26% of this growth, while wind accounted for 74%. Texas was the leader of the 48 contiguous states accounting for 26% of the national wind generation total.

Texas saw the largest jump in both solar and wind generation from 2021 to 2022—an increase of 6,253 GWh in solar and an increase of 19,082 GWh in wind.

The United States has a goal to reduce the carbon footprint to zero by 2050. And while there is still a long way to go these numbers are a good start to help attain the goal in 27 years.