Pennsylvania Lags Many Other States in Adoption of Renewable Energy, Report Says

Pennsylvania is making the transition to solar and wind energy at a slower pace than many other states and is nearly dead last on energy-efficiency growth, according to a new survey. 

Federal data analyzed by the nonprofit Environment America found that Pennsylvania’s best showing on the energy transition compared to the nation over the past decade came in electric vehicle registrations and EV charging ports. Growth in those areas helped Pennsylvania rank 17th out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, despite the lagging performance on renewable energy. That rank is unchanged from last year’s report.

“We’re making small steps in the right direction but we’re being outpaced by the nation and most of our neighbors,” said Ellie Kerns, a clean-energy advocate for PennEnvironment, the state’s affiliate for Environment America, which published the data on Thursday. 

Pennsylvania, second only to Texas on natural gas production, was second-to-last in the nation for growth—or, rather, lack of growth—in both energy efficiency and wind power. 

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Energy saved from efficiency efforts dropped nearly 60 percent in the state over the past decade while growing modestly nationwide, Environment America said. Wind power production decreased 8 percent in Pennsylvania while more than doubling nationally.

Solar energy production in the state quadrupled. But that put Pennsylvania behind 28 other states. Nationally, solar production rose more than eightfold.

The state’s best ranking came in growth of EV charging ports, better than all but 10 states. Pennsylvania drivers, meanwhile, registered some 64,000 EVs in 2023, a 43-fold increase in the last decade that put the state 14th in the nation. 

Pennsylvania ranked 19th for the last decade’s growth in battery storage capacity. But all of that happened in a single year, 2016, with nothing since.

Environmental advocates discussing the new data on Thursday called on state lawmakers to pass the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard. The bill, introduced by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, would increase the renewable share of electricity consumed to 35 percent by 2035. Only 8 percent is required by the current Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, enacted 20 years ago.

“We need to do that if we’re going to remain competitive,” said state Sen. Steve Santasiero, a Democrat, referring to Shapiro’s bill during a video call to launch the report. “We need to do it if, over time, we’re going to be able to provide both our residents as well as our industry with the energy they need.”

Rob Altenburg, senior director for energy and climate at the nonprofit PennFuture, said the report represents the latest evidence that Pennsylvania is lagging the rest of the U.S. in its adoption of renewable energy sources.

He said Pennsylvania’s renewable energy requirement is too low; the state has no legal requirement for community solar; applications for commercial-scale solar installations face bureaucratic delays at the grid operator PJM; and there’s no mandate to encourage faster adoption of EVs.

That means car dealers have fewer EVs options than they do in states—such as neighboring Delaware—that have EV mandates, and the available models are often the more expensive ones on which the dealers can make more money, Altenburg said.

“Car dealers tend to put more effort into marketing EVs in states that have EV mandates,” he said. “People say they want to buy an EV but dealers say they are not getting them because there’s no PA mandate.”

Altenberg attributed the latest decline in Pennsylvania’s energy efficiency to the state’s insufficient incentives. “You would expect to see a decline unless you were incentivizing energy efficiency projects at a greater and greater scale, and we’re not doing that,” he said.

But clean energy upgrades can be made at the local level, said Mike Ksiazek, a member of the board of supervisors in Middletown, Bucks County. Helped by funding from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the utility PECO, the township has installed eight EV chargers, including four fast chargers, as part of a local climate action plan that began in 2021, he said.

“This is one step toward providing access to EV infrastructure, and one step toward our broader goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions locally,” he said.