BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Something shifted in the world’s energy system in 2025, and the numbers are hard to argue with.
For the first time in modern history, clean energy generation grew faster than global electricity demand, meaning every new watt of power the world needed last year came from renewables, not coal, oil, or gas. Fossil fuel generation, which had risen in nearly every year of this century, fell by 0.2 percent.
The data comes from Ember, an energy think tank that tracks electricity output from 215 countries. Clean power generation grew 887 terawatt-hours in 2025, exceeding global demand growth of 849 terawatt-hours. The share of renewables in the global electricity mix crossed one-third for the first time, reaching 33.8 percent.
Solar did most of the work, growing 30 percent and meeting three-quarters of last year’s net rise in demand on its own. Combined with wind, the two sources covered 99 percent of new demand growth.
China and India changed the math
For the first time this century, both China and India saw declines in fossil fuel generation. China fell 0.9 percent. India fell 3.3 percent. Both countries, long among the world’s largest fossil fuel consumers, are now, in the words of Ember’s lead analyst Nicolas Fulghum, “aggressively pursuing a strategy of diversification through bringing renewables into the mix.”
China alone accounted for more than half of global solar capacity and generation growth in 2025, and for most of the world’s new wind output. India set records in both solar and wind generation.
“We’re coming from a period over the last few decades where new electricity demand growth meant growth in fossil generation,” said Fulghum. “We’re now moving into a world where that’s no longer the case.”
Storage is making it stick
Battery costs fell 45 percent last year while storage capacity grew 46 percent, allowing solar power to run beyond peak daylight hours. Ember estimates that the battery capacity added in 2025 can shift 14 percent of solar generation from midday to other parts of the day.
The US and Europe each added substantial new solar capacity, 85 terawatt-hours and 60 terawatt-hours, respectively, even as fossil fuels saw small increases in both markets. In the US, political pressure to expand coal, oil, and gas production has not reversed the broader trend.
Alexis Abramson, dean of the Columbia University Climate School, said the shift is real. “We’ve really crossed this important threshold that clean energy now can meet rising demand economically and at the same time really help address national security concerns,” she said. “The next challenge is really turning that into a steady decline of fossil fuel use as well.”
Clean energy can now keep pace with demand growth. Replacing the fossil fuel generation that already exists is a different, harder task, one that will take longer and will require this pace of deployment to hold for years. The 2025 numbers are a starting point that the world has not had before.
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