Top US power outage statistics

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

How long do power outages last?

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

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

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

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

How many hours a year does the average customer lose?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which states lose power the longest?

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

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

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

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

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

Which states lose power the least?

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

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

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

What are the biggest US power outages?

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

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

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

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

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

How long did the biggest outages take to fix?

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

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

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

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

What causes power outages?

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

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

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

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

How much do power outages cost?

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

How we compiled these numbers

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

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

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

How long a backup plan should cover

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

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

Top US oil production statistics

• EIA’s monthly series peaks at 13,995 thousand barrels a day in October 2025.
• Annual output rose 3%, or 350,000 barrels daily, in 2025 to a new record.
• Texas produced 5,761 thousand barrels daily in 2025, or 42.2% of the US total.
• New Mexico’s output went from 1,032 thousand b/d in 2020 to 2,205 in 2025.
• Offshore wells on the US Outer Continental Shelf produced a record 714 million barrels in 2025, BSEE reports.
• In 2025 the US exported 2,848 thousand barrels a day more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, and every year since 2020 has been a net export year.
• US crude oil imports fell from 10,126 thousand b/d in 2005 to 6,168 in 2025.
• EIA’s January 2026 outlook expected 2027 output to fall 2% to 13.3 million barrels daily, a view it has since reversed.

How much oil does the US produce each year?

EIA’s annual series has US crude oil production at 13,662 thousand barrels per day in 2025, up from 5,000 in 2008.

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

The 1970 row was the annual high for decades, and the 2018 row topped it. After 2008 the series dips at the 2016 row and again at the 2020 and 2021 rows.

What was the record year for US oil production?

EIA reported in May 2026 that the US pumped a record 13.6 million barrels of crude oil a day in 2025, above the previous record set in 2024.

EIA’s March 2026 article gave the same 13.6 million, and after its September 30, 2026 release the annual table reads 13,662 thousand barrels daily for 2025, which rounds to 13.7 million.

The record month is October 2025, at 13,995 thousand barrels daily, with April 2026 the closest since at 13,981. If you cite either one, say which you mean.

EIA revises its numbers. Rigzone reported in September 2025 that EIA’s table showed 2024 at 13.235 million barrels daily, and the table above now shows 13,267 thousand. The American Petroleum Institute’s website still calls 13.5 million barrels daily in December 2024 a record, a figure EIA’s monthly series has since passed.

What turned US oil production around after 2008?

A January 2026 preprint that hasn’t been peer reviewed credits horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing with lifting US crude oil from 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to more than 12 million by 2019. The page on fracking for oil and gas covers the technique, and the page on the US shale gas boom covers the gas side of the story.

Output kept growing in 2025 while drilling slowed, and EIA reports that the average number of Lower 48 rigs was 5% below 2024 with 1% fewer wells drilled.

Oil executives answering the Dallas Fed’s survey for the third quarter of 2026 put the oil production index at 20.7, up from 15.0 in the second quarter. ExxonMobil reported record Permian production of more than 1.8 million oil-equivalent barrels a day for the second quarter of 2026, a figure that includes gas.

Which states produce the most oil?

Texas leads by a wide margin, with 5,761 thousand b/d against 2,205 for New Mexico in 2025, and the two together made 58.3% of the national figure.

Source: EIA, Crude Oil Production by state, annual. Federal offshore waters are not a state.

Federal offshore waters in the Gulf of America produced 1,942 thousand barrels daily in 2025, more than any state except Texas and New Mexico. North Dakota’s own count was 1,165,903 barrels daily in September 2025, within 1% of EIA’s estimate for the year, and the state says 97.5% came from the Bakken and Three Forks.

State agencies count differently from EIA. The Railroad Commission of Texas reported 4,083,173 barrels daily in December 2025 from oil leases, with condensate reported separately and the figure still preliminary, so it can’t be set against EIA’s full-year Texas estimate. EIA’s own note says its state estimates normally differ from state agency data.

If you live in Martin or Midland County, Texas, you’re in the two counties that pumped the most crude oil in December 2025, 21,192,493 barrels and 18,637,326.

How does US oil production compare with Saudi Arabia and Russia?

The US is ahead of both. EIA’s September 2026 outlook puts US crude for 2025 at 13.66 million barrels per day, against 9.33 for Saudi Arabia and 9.12 for Russia.

Source: EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook Table 3d, September 2026 and EIA, Today in Energy, July 9, 2026, which cites EIA’s International Energy Statistics. Crude oil includes lease condensate for the US.

EIA publishes two sets of numbers for the same years. Its International Energy Statistics database has 9.6 million barrels daily for Saudi Arabia in 2025 and 9.9 million for Russia in 2024, with Russia largely unchanged in 2025. A note under the outlook table says country data can blur the line between crude oil and other liquids.

EIA also counts a wider measure of petroleum and other liquid fuels, and the outlook has US production on it at 23.69 million barrels daily in 2025. If you’ve seen a US figure near 24 million barrels daily, that’s the wider measure and it isn’t comparable with the crude numbers above.

How much oil does the US import and export?

The US imported 6,168 thousand barrels daily of crude oil in 2025 and exported 3,961.

Source: EIA, U.S. Imports of Crude Oil, U.S. Exports of Crude Oil and U.S. Net Imports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, annual, released September 30, 2026. A negative net figure means the US exported more than it imported.

The 2005 row is the peak, when the US imported 12,549 thousand barrels daily more crude oil and petroleum products than it exported. The monthly numbers crossed over before the annual ones did. EIA said that in September 2019 the US became a net petroleum exporter for the first time since monthly records began in 1973.

Congress ended the crude oil export ban in a law approved December 18, 2015, which says that no official of the Federal Government shall impose or enforce any restriction on the export of crude oil. In 2015 crude exports averaged 465 thousand barrels daily, against 3,961 in 2025. A National Academy of Engineering advisor wrote in 2018 that after a 40-year ban was lifted in 2015 the US had become an exporter of oil and liquefied natural gas.

The table also shows crude imports above crude exports in every row. The energy independence page covers what net exports do and don’t mean for supply.

What does EIA forecast for 2026 and 2027?

EIA’s September 2026 outlook, completed September 3, forecasts US crude oil production of 13.83 million barrels a day in 2026 and 14.26 million in 2027.

Source: EIA, Short-Term Energy Outlook Table 4a, September 2026. The three regional rows sit inside the Lower 48 row, and regions follow geography and don’t match geologic formations. The 2026 and 2027 columns are forecasts.

EIA says the 2026 forecast would surpass the previous record of 13.7 million barrels daily set in 2025. The first half of 2026 is already in the data, at 13.7 million barrels daily, 2% more than the first half of 2025.

The forecast moved between outlooks. EIA’s October 2025 outlook had 13.5 million barrels daily for 2026, its January 2026 outlook had 2027 falling to 13.3 million, and its July 2026 outlook raised 2027 to 14.0 million. The September outlook, in the table above, is higher again.

The September outlook was written during a Middle East conflict. EIA assessed crude oil shut-ins in the region at 6.7 million b/d in August 2026 and forecast Brent at about $90 a barrel in the second half of 2026. If you filled a tank in May 2026, EIA’s July outlook put the US average retail gasoline price at $4.48 a gallon and forecast about $3.60 for the second half of 2026, before the September outlook raised the Brent forecast. The page on why oil prices swing so much covers what moves those prices.

In its May 2026 report the IEA expected five Americas producers, the US among them, to deliver close to 1.5 million barrels daily of new supply in 2026.

How we compiled these numbers

We took annual production, state estimates, imports and exports from EIA’s data pages and forecasts from EIA’s September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook. Crude oil means EIA’s field production of crude oil, which includes lease condensate, and it excludes the wider total of petroleum and other liquids. 2026 is a partial year, because EIA’s monthly series runs to July 2026.

We show EIA’s two sets of country figures side by side because they differ, and we left out Canada, China and Brazil because we couldn’t find one consistent crude oil source for them. The next outlook is due October 6, 2026 and the next monthly data October 30, 2026, and this page will be updated after both.

The Gulf of America projects already adding barrels

Four major Gulf of America projects have come online since January 2025, among them Shenandoah, which EIA says has produced an average of 70,000 barrels a day since July 2025. EIA expects four smaller projects by the end of 2026 and notes that hurricanes in the Gulf could disrupt the timeline.

Each table above links to the EIA page it came from, so open it, find the row for the year you need, and check the release date in the source line before you cite it, since EIA revises recent years.

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

Top electric car charging cost statistics

• A 2026 Tesla Model Y Long Range RWD, rated at 25 kWh per 100 miles, costs about $4.59 to cover that distance at home at the US average price for January to July 2026.
• A 2026 Kia EV9 Long Range AWD, rated at 40 kWh per 100 miles, costs about $7.28 for the same distance.
• US households paid an average of 17.30 cents per kWh for electricity in 2025.
• July 2026 alone averaged 18.31 cents per kWh for US residential customers.
• EIA’s September 2026 outlook forecasts a residential price of 18.2 cents per kWh for 2026 and 18.6 for 2027.
• Public DC fast chargers averaged $0.53 per kWh in the first quarter of 2026, according to Paren.
• The average new 2024 vehicle gets 27.2 mpg in real-world driving, a record, according to EPA.
• J.D. Power’s 2026 owner survey found that 86% of typical EV charging happens at home.
• Electrify America says a Pass+ membership saves about 25% on charging.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?

Home charging costs about $5.46 per 100 miles for a Nissan Leaf, which the EPA rates at 30 kWh over that distance. Across the seven 2026 EVs in the table it runs from $4.48 for the Tesla Model 3 to $7.28 for the Kia EV9 at the January to July 2026 US average price.

Source: EPA ratings from fueleconomy.gov for the Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Leaf, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Chevrolet Equinox EV and Kia EV9, priced at the January to July 2026 US residential average from EIA. Costs are calculated from these sources.

The two Teslas sit at the low end of the table for energy use and the Kia at the high end.

A Nissan Leaf, with an EPA range of 288 miles, needs about $15.72 of electricity to cover it at the same price. A Ford Mustang Mach-E, rated at 320 miles, needs about $17.85.

J.D. Power’s 2026 owner survey found that EV owners spent an average of $63 on home charging in the past 30 days, up $5 from a year earlier.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car in your state?

From January to July 2026, US households paid 12.36 cents per kWh in North Dakota and 46.28 in Hawaii, the lowest and highest state prices in EIA’s table, so the same car costs different amounts to charge from place to place.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.B, with EPA ratings for the Tesla Model Y and the Chevrolet Equinox EV from fueleconomy.gov. Costs are calculated from these sources.

EIA says electricity prices vary by locality with the availability of power plants and fuels, local fuel costs and pricing regulations. Florida and Texas sit below the US average in the table.

Plug an Equinox EV in at a Hawaii address and 100 miles costs about $14.38, against $3.84 in North Dakota.

J.D. Power’s owner survey found regional differences in spending too, with New England owners at $99 and Mountain-region owners at $36 over 30 days.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at a public charging station?

DC fast chargers averaged 53.8 cents per kWh across the US in the second quarter of 2026, according to Paren’s quarterly report. The table prices that and other options for a Chevrolet Equinox EV, with the gas Equinox at EIA’s gasoline price for comparison.

Source: Georgia Power, PG&E, EVgo, Electrek on Tesla Supercharger pricing, Paren, Q2 2026 and EIA weekly gasoline prices, with EPA ratings for the Chevrolet Equinox EV and the Chevrolet Equinox. Costs are calculated from these sources. The Georgia Power, PG&E, EVgo and Tesla rows each describe one plan, network or city.

At the Paren average, DC fast charging an Equinox EV costs about the same per mile as running the gas Equinox.

Electrek reports that at peak hours at Los Angeles Superchargers, non-Tesla drivers pay about $0.60 per kWh and Tesla owners $0.45. A $12.99 monthly membership gives non-Tesla EVs the Tesla rate.

Electrify America says DC fast prices depend on the charger’s location, your plan and the energy delivered, and its Pass+ membership saves about 25%. Its page gives no flat per-kWh price.

EVgo lists Level 2 charging at $0.28 per kWh in select locations and adds a $2.99 fee to sessions started with a credit card.

Hawaii was the most expensive state for fast charging in that quarter, as it is for home electricity.

Is charging an electric car cheaper than buying gas?

Driving 100 miles costs about $5.65 in the Equinox EV and about $16.54 in the gas Equinox, going by the EPA’s side-by-side ratings at the January to July 2026 home average and EIA’s September 28 gasoline price. EPA’s Automotive Trends Report puts the average new 2024 vehicle at 27.2 mpg in real-world driving, close to the gas Equinox’s rating.

Those prices cover different periods, and gasoline has moved fast. EIA’s weekly series had regular at $4.085 on August 24, 2026 and at $4.465 five weeks later.

Home electricity rose from 12.55 cents per kWh in 2016 to 17.30 cents in 2025. Regular gasoline went from $2.143 to $3.097 a gallon over the same years.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, EIA, Electric Power Annual, Table 2.4 for 2015, EIA regular gasoline annual prices, and 2026 EPA ratings for the Chevrolet Equinox EV and the Chevrolet Equinox. Prices are nominal dollars. Costs are calculated from these sources.

The gas Equinox’s cost per 100 miles peaked in 2022, when regular averaged $3.951 a gallon.

We computed each cost by multiplying an energy rate by a price. For electric cars that’s the EPA energy rating times the price per kWh, and for the gas Equinox it’s the price per gallon divided by its miles per gallon. The history table holds the 2026 ratings fixed and varies the prices, so it shows what each year’s prices would have cost a 2026 car. Electricity is an average over a span of months and gasoline is a single week, which is why the comparison at the top of this section names both dates.

For more on the vehicles themselves, see the pages on electric vehicle sales and natural gas vehicles in the US.

How much electricity does it take to charge an electric car?

A Tesla Model Y Long Range RWD uses 25 kWh of electricity per 100 miles under its 2026 EPA rating. A kilowatt-hour is the energy your bill charges for, and a kilowatt is how fast a charger delivers it.

Level 1 charging adds about 5 miles of range per hour, according to the Department of Energy. Level 2 adds about 25 miles per hour. DC fast charging adds 100 to 200+ miles per 30 minutes.

Some energy is lost on the way to the battery. fueleconomy.gov’s EV technology page says battery charging efficiency is often 84% to 93%. A peer-reviewed measurement study found one-way losses of 12% to 36% in its test setups.

Battery size is a different number again. KBB lists the Hyundai Ioniq 5 at 84 kWh. The EPA rating works out to 95.4 kWh over that car’s 318-mile range. Check which figure a review or your car’s screen is quoting before you compare prices.

How can you pay less to charge an electric car?

The hour you plug in changes the price on a time-of-use plan. PG&E’s EV2-A plan charges 23 cents per kWh in summer from midnight to 3 p.m. Between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. the price reaches 54 cents.

Georgia Power’s Overnight Advantage plan lists 2.1859 cents per kWh from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. On summer weekday afternoons the on-peak price is 29.7868 cents. The page gives per-kWh rates and doesn’t say whether other charges apply, so the plan’s price on your full bill may differ.

Ask your utility whether it offers an EV or time-of-use plan, and compare its overnight price with your current rate. Drivers who also want power during outages can read our page on home battery backup.

What EIA’s outlook says about home power and gasoline in 2027

EIA’s September 2026 outlook forecasts a US residential price of 18.2 cents per kWh for 2026 and 18.6 for 2027. It forecasts retail gasoline at $3.84 a gallon in 2026 and $3.35 in 2027. The next outlook is due October 6, 2026.

To price your own car, take its energy use per 100 miles from the Find a Car page on fueleconomy.gov and multiply by the cents per kWh on your power bill, which gives your cost for that distance in cents.

Top photo: Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top coal statistics

• The Carboniferous Period lasted about 359.2 to 299 million years ago, and in the US its Pennsylvanian stage holds the coal-bearing layers, says the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology.
• Anthracite holds about twice the heat of lignite, about 15,000 Btu per pound against 7,000, according to USGS.
• In 2024, Wyoming mined 190.7 million short tons, which is 37.2% of the US total.
• US coal output peaked at 1,171.8 million short tons in 2008 and was 528.4 million in 2025.
• The US has the most proved coal reserves of any country, about 21% of the world total, says Stanford’s energy hub.
• EIA estimates US recoverable coal reserves at 249.4 billion short tons as of January 1, 2025.

How is coal formed?

Coal forms when swamp plants pile up as peat and then spend millions of years buried and heated. In Pennsylvania, the coal-forming plants first piled up about 320 million years ago, says the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.

The process starts with peat. USGS describes it as loosely consolidated layers of plant and mineral matter that build up in wetlands. Penn State’s coal outreach page says plants in oxygen-poor swamp water don’t rot away, since normal decay needs oxygen. In the Pennsylvanian swamps, plant material did not decay when the seas covered it.

Sediment then buries the peat. The Kentucky Geological Survey says the weight squeezes out much of the water from the peat and shrinks its volume.

How much plant debris makes a foot of coal depends on who you ask. North Dakota’s state history site says 10 feet of decayed vegetation make 1 foot of coal. Stanford’s energy hub says 20 meters of woody plant material make a 1-meter seam. Neither shows a method, and no geological survey page we opened gives a figure.

Heat does the rest of the work. The earth warms about 1 degree Fahrenheit for every 70 to 100 feet of depth, and the survey calls heating the primary control on how far coal advances.

Some of the original peat survives inside the finished coal. The Illinois State Geological Survey calls the stone lumps of fossil peat found in its coal seams coal balls. If a stream near you cuts into an Illinois coal bed, the survey says erosion can uncover them, and a fresh one looks like a rounded, dull brown rock crusted with coal.

What is coal made of?

The Pennsylvania Geological Survey’s table of example samples shows carbon rising from 59.0% in peat to 94.0% in Pennsylvania anthracite while the oxygen column falls the other way.

Source: Pennsylvania Geological Survey, Coal in Pennsylvania (Educational Series 7), adapted from a 1928 table. Each row is a single example sample.

Coal isn’t pure plant matter. Penn State’s coal outreach page says coal is not pure organic material, because minerals wash into the swamp and the plants carry their own ash.

How long does coal take to form, and how hot does it get?

Coal takes millions of years, and the US mines coal that formed more than 290 million years ago in West Virginia and about 60 million years ago in the Powder River Basin. West Virginia’s land kept sinking for more than 50 million years while swamps laid down its coal seams.

Source: e-WV, Illinois State Geological Survey, Wyoming State Geological Survey, Mining Technology and NDStudies.gov for the ages, and EIA’s Annual Coal Report 2024, Table 6 for the rank. North Dakota’s page says the last seas drained away early in the Cenozoic, which began about 65 million years ago, and gives no single age for the lignite. Illinois’s page gives the Pennsylvanian period and no age in years.

A PNAS commentary says the highest rates of organic carbon burial in the past half billion years came 330 to 260 million years ago, in large part from peat buried in broad tropical lowland basins.

The sources disagree on the age of western coal. EIA’s Energy Kids page says most US subbituminous coal is at least 100 million years old. The University of Calgary’s Energy Education site puts extensive coal deposits in the Cretaceous, 65 to 144 million years ago.

Wyoming’s geological survey says most of the state’s Paleogene coals are subbituminous, and Mining Technology dates the basin’s beds to about 60 million years ago. The table follows the Wyoming and Powder River dates, which name both the period and the basin.

The sources also disagree on what does the work. EIA says the rank of a deposit is determined by the pressure and heat that acted on the plants. Kentucky’s survey says pressure is a minor influence, and Wikipedia’s coal article says temperature is much more important than pressure or time of burial.

Temperatures by rank are harder to find. Wikipedia’s coal article says subbituminous coal can form at as low as 35 to 80 degrees Celsius. It puts anthracite at at least 180 to 245 degrees Celsius. No survey or federal page we opened gives figures, so treat both as one source’s numbers.

What are the four ranks of coal?

EIA sorts coal into four ranks, with lignite at the bottom and anthracite at the top. The table gives each rank’s carbon content, heating value and share of 2024 US output.

Source: EIA, Coal explained for carbon, NDStudies.gov for heating value, and shares computed from EIA’s Annual Coal Report 2024, Table 6.

The carbon figures here don’t match the Pennsylvania survey’s samples above. EIA’s ranges run lower than the survey’s examples for the same ranks, and EIA doesn’t say what basis its percentages use, so each stays in its own table.

The US average sits between the ranks. EIA reports that coal produced in the US averaged 20.383 million Btu per short ton in 2025, which works out to about 10,190 Btu per pound at 2,000 pounds per short ton.

Lignite stays close to home. If you live in lignite country, the power plant down the road probably burns it, and EIA says producers sell lignite almost exclusively to power plants near the mines.

Anthracite is the smallest rank. Pennsylvania’s 40 anthracite mines produced 2,958 thousand short tons in 2024.

Where does coal come from in the US?

Bituminous coal comes mainly from the Appalachian and Illinois Basins, subbituminous coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, and lignite from the Midwest, mostly North Dakota and Texas. The table lists ten coal states by output.

Source: EIA, Annual Coal Report 2024, Tables 1 and 6. Pennsylvania’s total includes 3.0 million short tons of anthracite.

According to EIA’s 2022 ranking, the two largest US mines are both in Wyoming. Peabody reports that North Antelope Rochelle produced 65 million tons of coal in 2025 and holds 1.23 billion tons of proven and probable reserves.

How much of each kind of coal does the US mine?

Bituminous coal led in 2024 at 248.0 million short tons, ahead of 221.5 million for subbituminous. The table below runs year by year.

Source: EIA, Annual Coal Report 2024, Table ES1. Bituminous and anthracite include a small amount of refuse recovery. EIA hasn’t published 2025 production by rank.

In EIA’s Table ES1, bituminous and subbituminous swap the lead in 2010, 2011, 2015, 2017, 2020 and 2024. Every rank fell in 2020, and lignite fell in eight of the ten years from 2015 to 2024. Anthracite stays the smallest rank in every year.

How much coal is left in the US?

The US demonstrated reserve base, which is coal identified to set levels of accuracy, held about 468 billion short tons on January 1, 2025. Not all of that can be mined. Recoverable reserves, which EIA gets by removing coal that can’t be reached and applying mining recovery rates, were 249,351 million short tons.

Source: EIA, Annual Coal Report 2024, Table 15. Demonstrated reserve base as of January 1, 2025, and reserves at producing mines as of December 31, 2024.

The three states at the head of the reserves table hold 59.1% of the demonstrated reserve base, by arithmetic on the table. Montana holds the most coal in the ground, 25% of the base on January 1, 2023, yet it ranks fifth in output in the state table above.

If you’re wondering whether the US will run out, simple division gives about 486 years of recoverable reserves at the 2024 pace and about 21 years at producing mines. EIA does the same math and says the real number depends on changes in production and reserves estimates.

The last national USGS assessment, published in 1975, put US coal resources in the ground at 4 trillion short tons, and EIA says no newer national assessment exists.

How we sourced these numbers

The figures come from EIA’s Annual Coal Report for 2024, which holds final data for that year. EIA’s Coal explained pages still carry 2022 data, so definitions are all we took from them. The shares by rank, Wyoming’s share, the reserve percentage and the years of reserves are our arithmetic on EIA’s tables.

EIA counts in short tons of 2,000 pounds, and all tonnages here are short tons. The 2025 production total is from EIA’s Monthly Energy Review and can be revised. The history table ends at 2024, and EIA hasn’t published 2025 production by rank. We left out ages and ratios that a single non-survey source gives, unless the text names the source.

What EIA expects the US to mine in 2026 and 2027

EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook of September 2026 expects US coal production of 516 million short tons in 2026 and 497 million in 2027, down from 528 million in 2025. It also forecasts coal-fired generation falling 8% in 2026 and 6% in 2027. Both are forecasts, and EIA’s next outlook is due in October 2026.

The decline of coal on the US grid is tracked on its own page. For coal beside oil and gas, see the types of fossil fuels, and for a country that leaned on coal after closing its reactors, see Germany’s nuclear phase-out. The reserves table above shows how far apart the two measures sit. When you next see a US coal reserves number, check whether it’s the demonstrated reserve base or the much smaller figure for working mines.

Top photo: Peabody Energy, Inc., CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

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.