NREL’s 2024 Standard Scenarios Now Available

Celebrating Its 10th Edition, This NREL Product Models Least-Cost Electricity Futures for the United States

Jan. 6, 2025 | By Emily Mercer | Contact media relations

Image of the United States from space at night. — *Photo from Getty Images*

Every year, U.S. electricity systems continue to modernize to help lower Americans’ energy costs and increase energy reliability.

To keep up with the rapid pace of change, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) tracks evolutions in electricity sector technologies, markets, and policies. The analysis is updated and released annually as a suite of forward-looking scenarios of the U.S. power sector, called the Standard Scenarios.

The scenarios are primarily modeled using the latest technology cost and performance data from NREL's Annual Technology Baseline and Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model and show the possible evolution of the utility-scale electricity sector across the contiguous United States from present day through 2050. Marking its 10^th annual release, the 2024 Standard Scenarios once again provides valuable information on future trends in energy technology deployment and generation, energy costs, and emissions. The 2024 edition shows a least-cost reliable buildout of the grid’s assets under current policies with significant growth in wind, solar, storage, and natural gas generators.

A wide range of stakeholders rely on the Standard Scenarios every year to plan how they could meet future energy demands while ensuring reliability. For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the scenarios to guide responsible new infrastructure development.

"Over the past decade, the Standard Scenarios have been a valuable tool to help us understand the possible future of the U.S. electricity sector—and how key uncertainties could change what that future looks like,” said Pieter Gagnon, NREL grid researcher and lead author of the Standard Scenarios.

The Data Digest

The 2024 Standard Scenarios includes 61 forward-looking scenarios that have been designed to capture a wide range of possible futures. An NREL technical report summarizes trends across the scenarios, and the full suite can be viewed and downloaded from NREL’s Scenario Viewer.

The suite includes a scenario called the Mid-case, which uses central values for key inputs like technology costs, fuel prices, electricity demand growth, and state and federal policies as of August 2024. Additional scenarios explore variations in factors such as technology costs, transmission conditions, resource availability, emerging technologies, and future policies, including tax credit extensions and decarbonization mandates.

A notable addition to this year’s scenario suite is the inclusion of scenarios with 100% net life-cycle CO₂-equivalent (CO₂e) decarbonization.

Overall, data presented in the scenarios show that wind, solar, natural gas, storage, nuclear, and hydropower all continue to have significant contributions across a wide range of possible futures. Other key takeaways from the 2024 technical report include the following:

Under current policies, coal without carbon capture and storage (CCS) mostly retires or retrofits with CCS by 2032.
The introduction of 100% life-cycle CO₂e decarbonization scenarios results in capacity mixtures not seen previously.
Most, but not all, scenarios see an increase in natural gas capacity.
Wind, solar, and storage grow significantly, making up the majority of new capacity.
In later years, fossil generators without carbon capture provide a greater share of firm capacity than generation.
Currently nascent technologies play a limited role under current policies and a larger role in futures with additional policies or cost breakthroughs.

Attend Jan. 16 Webinar To Learn More

If you’re interested in learning more, register to attend a free NREL webinar at 11 a.m. MT on Jan. 16, 2025. You can also read the 2024 Standard Scenarios technical report and view or download the scenarios on the NREL Scenario Viewer.

The Standard Scenarios is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and is part of a larger NREL effort to ensure energy analyses incorporate transparent, realistic, and timely assumptions and consider diverse potential futures.

Learn more about NREL's energy analysis research, and sign up for NREL's energy analysis newsletter.