The U.S. electric grid relied on coal-powered electricity for the majority of power generation and an insatiable demand for oil continued to grow, both domestically and abroad. Fossil fuel prices reached all-time highs and the U.S. would launch Operation Iraqi Freedom to oust Saddam Hussein from power.

The Iraq War would have deep impacts on U.S. energy and national security policy over the coming decade as the conflict would drag on until 2011. Given the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction and the increased toll on the American public from the conflict, legislators looked to increase energy independence in the United States and reduce reliance on foreign oil.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained a variety of measures to spark growth of renewable energy, including a 30 percent investment tax credit for residential and commercial solar energy. The next year, a young Jigar Shah left his day job to start a small renewable energy company called SunEdison that sought to make solar energy accessible to the masses through a “no money down” approach.

The winds of an “energy transition” were beginning to blow across the country. Public awareness of carbon emissions and overwhelming evidence of global warming and its impacts would begin to spread. In 2006, former Vice President Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth, which made climate change a household topic. A few years later, Tesla would release the Roadster, an all-electric sports car with a 244-mile range.

Over the next ten years, progress came slowly. Prices gradually fell for renewable energy as it gained economies of scale and earned further policy support through extensions of the federal investment tax credit and state-level support through their own layers of policy. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009, passed by President Barack Obama, launched state-level solar policy initiatives through a robust allocation of funding. Some states, like Maryland, would use the funding to catapult their energy departments forward with sustainable policy. Others, like Virginia, would spend the funds as quickly as possible and move on.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 had other measures that would severely impact the energy industry beyond the support for nascent renewable energy. It also would foster a boom across the country in natural gas extraction using relatively new processes known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling. Gas prices would crash from over $12 per MMbtu in June 2008 to under $4 per MMbtu less than a year later.

Utilities across the country that relied on coal for electricity now had a cost-effective path to reducing carbon emissions by switching to natural gas. Between 2012 and 2021, nearly 10 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity was retired each year. Natural gas would fill the gap, but it was not alone. Renewable energy would help pave the way. Solar and wind now dominate new capacity figures and the EIA estimates that more than half of all new U.S. electric-generating capacity in 2023 would be from solar. New programs like community solar now make adopting solar more accessible and equitable. Battery energy storage has grown in response to increased renewable energy on the grid so that it can be used to match periods of peak demand.