By: Richard Box – Senior Vice President, Energy & Environment

America’s clean-energy future is arriving faster than most people expected. In Texas, the state best known for oil and gas, solar power is on track to beat coal generation over a full calendar year for the first time on the main grid. That’s not a cultural conversion story; it’s a market story. When the most efficient energy wins, it keeps winning.

The current reality is that the grid needs to expand and harden at the same time it is being asked to do more, fueling power-hungry data centers, supporting electrified transportation, and withstanding extreme-heat and cold peaks. Across the country, the limiting factor is not our ability to generate clean power, but rather to move it, store it, and balance it. A grid that’s stronger on both the electricity and natural-gas sides is what prevents an energy transition from turning into a reliability gamble.

Renewables Require Reliability

But here’s the part that could be controversial: if the United States wants to get to a renewable-heavy system without repeated reliability crises, it will still rely on oil and natural gas for the next couple of decades. That’s simply an engineering and economics reality.

Natural gas is, well, the natural answer.

It remains the largest single source of U.S. electricity generation, even as its share fluctuates year to year.  It’s also the largest source of U.S. domestic energy production, having surpassed coal years ago. And despite all the discussions around reviving coal, the financial math simply doesn’t bear out: digging it up, transporting it, and running aging plants is increasingly a losing proposition in many markets, which is one reason coal production has fallen to its lowest annual level since the 1960s. 

Region matters, too. In high-sun states like Texas, solar is simply the answer for a growing share of hours, and it’s getting easier to finance because the underlying costs keep falling. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has documented steep declines in PV system costs since 2010 (including utility-scale).  As the payback period tightens from “a 15-year bet” to something closer to “a 3 to 5-year business decision,” adoption becomes inevitable.

A Bridge to a Greener Future

Solar farms have matured from novelty to infrastructure. Developers have learned how to build them faster, maintain them cheaper, and manage land use creatively, including using grazing animals like goats to control vegetation. But the next big chapter isn’t panels; it’s batteries. Storage turns “sunny-hour power” into “any-hour power,” and that’s what makes renewables feel dependable to grid operators and investors. Texas’ growth in utility-scale battery installations is part of why solar is becoming more grid-relevant, not just more common. And nationally, a surge in new solar and battery buildout is expected to continue as demand rises. 

None of that eliminates the need for gas in the medium term.

Gas plants are the system’s shock absorbers: they ramp, they firm, they cover the gap when clouds roll in or wind dies down. Rather than pitting renewables and gas against each other, the pragmatic agenda is renewables-plus-storage-plus-transmission, with gas as the reliability backstop while we scale. Over the next 20 years, the U.S. will likely “chase gas” because it’s comparatively easy to move, dispatch, and expand, especially with LNG and industrial demand pulling the market in new directions. 

That doesn’t mean hand-waving away legitimate concerns. Living near a pipeline can make people nervous, and methane leaks are a real climate problem that policy and industry have been slow to fully quantify and fix. If natural gas is going to play the bridge role, then modernizing pipeline infrastructure, tightening leak detection and reporting, and investing in safer operations is the cost of credibility.

And oil? Even in an electrified future, oil doesn’t vanish. We will still need hydrocarbons for petrochemicals such as plastics, medical supplies, industrial materials, and cosmetics long after we need them to fuel daily commutes. The “oil business” simply shrinks and shifts from combustion to materials. The best way to speed the transition is to stop pretending we can skip steps. Build renewables aggressively where they’re already winning. Invest in the grid like it’s a national project. Scale batteries and solve safety and siting pushback with better standards. And, for the next several decades, use natural gas as the bridge that keeps the lights on while we work towards a greener future.

Richard Box brings 35 years of international experience in energy, with expertise encompassing operations, business development, client management, and practice leadership. As Senior Vice President of Energy & Environment, he works closely with sector leaders at Hill International, GEI Consultants, Palladium, and other GISI Consulting Group companies to formulate and implement energy and environmental strategy.