Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse for ‘first time ever’
Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse for ‘first time ever’
Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse for ‘first time ever’
Clean energy pushes fossil-fuel power into reverse for ‘first time ever’
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From the article:
> The growth of solar and wind meant that, for the first time since 1919, the share of coal power was lower than that of renewables.
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> Fossil-fuel generation fell by 0.2% in 2025, the thinktank’s latest annual review says, with wind and solar alone meeting 99% of the growth in electricity demand last year.
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> While generation from fossil fuels has occasionally fallen year-on-year in the past, Ember says this is the first time it has happened due to the structural shift towards clean power, rather than due to economic crises or other one-off events
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> Record solar generation was key to pushing fossil fuels into reverse, increasing 30% year-on-year – meaning it met 75% of global electricity demand growth in 2025 alone.
A structural decline in CO2 emissions from electricity generation is a major step towards a structural decline in overall GHG emissions. 2024 being the peak of emissions from electricity generation puts the world on track for overall emissions decline before 2030, a necessity for the less harmful climate change trajectories from the IPCC reports.
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[Solar has grown far faster than any generation technology in history](https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/marking-five-years-of-ember-with-five-charts-on-the-global-energy-transition/).
Solar grew from 100 TWh/yr to 2,000 TWh/yr in *11 years*, about 1/4 the time gas and coal took. [It reached that level in 2024](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source) and has [added over 1,100 TWh/yr in just the last 2 years](https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?data=generation&chart=year_over_year&tab=change&fuel=solar&entity=World&metric=absolute), putting it on track for reaching 4,000 TWh in 14 years. That means it will have *doubled in 3 years twice in a row*, an utterly unprecedented scaling rate (for reference, gas took 12 years to grow from 2,000 TWh/yr to 4,000 TWh/yr, exceeding that value only in 2007).
Solar will pass hydro to become the third-largest source of global electricity *next year*, from a niche curiosity just 15 years ago.
It’s astonishing that such a large, capital-intensive industry is transforming so quickly.
For some clarity, since these are common topics of confusion: The report talks about actual *power generation*, not just *capacity*.
Renewable numbers are often inflated because the nameplace capacity is cited, which is what a solar panel or wind turbine would produce if it was sunny or windy all year long. In reality, they typically only average around 1/3-1/5 of that over a year (depending on location).
But measuring *power generation* is much closer to their actual contribution to the grid. A small amount of that can still be in excess rather than useful (power which is generated and then actually causes issues, because it’s not currently needed), but this is not yet a significant issue on a global scale.
While criticisms of the frequent conflation of nameplate capacity with actual generation is correct, it became a relatively minor point compared to the ongoing exponential growth of renewables. Since global solar capacity has been close to doubling every 2-3 years, even an embellishment by a factor of 3-5 is ‘just’ off by around a decade, which is not all that much compared to how little every other form of electricity generation is developing.
I think [this page](https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2026/electricity-demand-and-supply-trends/) is probably the best overview of the general situation, comparing both percentages of electricity generation and annual growth rates:
* Solar: +29.7% in 2025, which caused it to rise from 6.9 to 8.7% of global electricity generation (average growth per year in the prior 5 years: 25.1%)
* Fossils: -0.2% growth, while decreasing from 59.1% to 57.74% of global electriciy generation (global power generation increased by 2.8%, so the relative decline is greater).
* Nuclear: +1.4% growth, falling from 9% to 8.9% of global electricity generation
So at these current rates, solar is going to massively outscale nuclear as the primary carbon-free power source in the next few years. With all major ‘Small Modular Reactor’ projects having delayted their first real prototypes into the 2030s, any potential resurgence of nuclear will only be a footnote in warding off the worst of climate change.