President Donald Trump has done a lot for the oil and coal industries. Since taking office, he’s halted more than 30 costly environmental regulations, approved two large oil pipelines, and opened up more public land for drilling. “We have ended the war on American energy,” Trump said in January.

America’s energy production is indeed on the rise: More than 3 gigawatts have been added to the country’s electric grid this year, enough to power more than 2 million homes. Problem is, almost none of that new capacity came from fossil fuels. It came from renewable resources.

According to data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), 95 percent of the energy capacity added in the first quarter of 2018 came from solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower. Only about 3 percent came from natural gas. By comparison, in the first quarter of 2017, approximately 33 percent of new capacity came from natural gas and 61 percent came from renewables. (There’s been no new capacity from coal this year or last.)

So what’s going on? Is renewable energy defying the odds of the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuel agenda? Or are this year’s surprising numbers just statistical anomalies?

Understanding the significance of FERC’s new data requires knowing the difference between capacity and generation. This year, America has added a lot of renewable capacity: the amount of megawatts that can be produced from solar and wind at any given time. Generation refers to how much power is actually being produced. “From a climate change perspective, what we ultimately care about is how much generation we get out of those clean power plants,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

