Where does US electricity come from?

In 2025 natural gas made 40.8% of US electricity, followed by nuclear (17.7%) and coal (16.6%). Wind made 10.5% and solar 6.7%. Solar counts only utility-scale plants, not rooftop panels, and the 2025 figures are preliminary.

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Key facts

Measure: Share of US electricity generation (%). Written from the data below.

  • Natural gas has the highest figure, 40.8%, followed by Nuclear (17.7%) and Coal (16.6%).
  • Other has the lowest figure, 2.1%, followed by Hydropower (5.6%) and Solar (6.7%).
  • The highest is 19 times the lowest.

The bigger picture, in plain words: Where is electricity cheapest in the U.S.?

This chart is one of the 50 in The U.S. in 50 charts, 2026, a yearly report of the key numbers on how the country is doing.

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How to read this chart

Each bar is one energy source's share of all the electricity made in the U.S. in a year, so the bars add up to about 100%. The bars start at zero, so a bar twice as long means twice the share. Solar counts only large power plants, not panels on rooftops.

Questions to discuss

  1. Which source makes the most electricity? About how many times more than the smallest bar?
  2. Which of these sources burn fuel and which don't? What share of electricity comes from each group?
  3. Why might a chart of this kind look different in your state than for the whole country?

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Source and date

Source
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review (Table 7.2a)
License
Public domain (U.S. government work)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “Where does US electricity come from?” Chart. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review (Table 7.2a), https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/ (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/where-us-electricity-comes-from (accessed November 4, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Source Share of US electricity generation (%)
Natural gas 40.8
Nuclear 17.7
Coal 16.6
Wind 10.5
Solar 6.7
Hydropower 5.6
Other 2.1

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