The global power system crossed a structural threshold in 2025 that energy analysts had identified as one of the clearest signals of a durable energy transition: for the first time since 1919, renewable energy sources generated more electricity worldwide than coal. The milestone, documented in Ember’s seventh annual Global Electricity Review published April 21 and corroborated by data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), marks a reversal more than a century in the making — and one that analysts say is unlikely to be temporary.
The Numbers Behind the Milestone
Renewables contributed 33.8% of global electricity generation in 2025, amounting to 10,730 terawatt hours (TWh), moving ahead of coal at 33.0%, or 10,476 TWh, for the first time in the modern power system.
The last time this occurred was in 1919, when global electricity demand was nearly 300 times smaller than in 2025. At that point, renewables — then almost entirely hydropower — briefly exceeded coal during a period of large dam construction following World War I. For over 100 years since then, coal power remained the single largest source of global electricity.
The overtaking was not the result of a single policy push or one country’s build-out. It reflects a decade of sustained, compounding growth across technologies and geographies. The share of wind and solar in the global electricity mix has risen more than 10 percentage points over the past decade, from 23% to 33.8%, while coal’s share dropped from 38.7% to 33.0% over the same period. Had wind and solar not grown since 2000, electricity generation from fossil fuels would have been 30% higher in 2025 and emissions 28% higher, Ember calculates.
Solar as the Primary Driver
The headline figures are largely a solar story. Solar generation rose by a record 636 TWh to reach 2,778 TWh in 2025, a 30% year-over-year increase — the fastest growth pace in eight years — and was responsible for 75% of net global electricity demand growth for the year.
Together, wind and solar met almost all — 99% — of net new electricity demand in 2025. Clean generation overall rose by 887 TWh, outpacing total electricity demand growth of 849 TWh, which meant that for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise.
While there have been annual declines in fossil fuel generation in the past, those were driven by economic crises or one-off shocks. Ember says this is the first time fossil generation fell due to the structural shift toward clean power, rather than demand destruction. That distinction matters for analysts assessing whether the trend is durable: this was not a recession-driven dip. It was supply being replaced.
China and India: A Simultaneous Fossil Fuel Decline
Perhaps the most analytically significant element of the 2025 data is what happened in the two countries that have historically anchored global fossil power consumption. 2025 was the first year this century when fossil generation fell in both China and India simultaneously. In China, it fell by 56 TWh (-0.9%), marking the first decline since 2015, as record clean power additions pushed low-carbon growth above demand growth. In India, a record increase in both solar and wind generation, combined with strong hydro output and lower-than-average demand growth, led to a decline in fossil generation of 52 TWh (-3.3%).
Combined, China and India made up 42% of global fossil fuel generation in 2025. Their simultaneous fossil decline offset small increases in the U.S., EU, and other economies, tipping the global balance in favor of renewables.
The significance of this data point is hard to overstate for anyone tracking long-run emissions trajectories. These are the economies whose energy decisions carry the most weight in any global accounting. A structural fall in both, driven by clean energy deployment rather than economic slowdown, represents a category shift in what analysts can project forward.
Africa and the Developing World: Closing Gaps
The transition is also showing up across regions that have historically been slower to deploy large-scale renewables. Africa experienced its largest renewable capacity increase on record in 2025, adding 11.3 GW for a growth rate of 15.9%, driven primarily by Ethiopia, South Africa, and Egypt. The Middle East also recorded its largest growth rate on record, at 28.9%, led by Saudi Arabia.
Globally, IRENA’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026 reported that total renewable power capacity reached 5,149 GW by the end of 2025 following the addition of 692 GW — a 15.5% annual increase and the highest annual growth on record. Renewable energy now accounts for 85.6% of all new power capacity added worldwide.
The African growth figures, while still a small share of global additions in absolute terms, carry strategic weight. Ethiopia’s expanding hydropower, South Africa’s accelerating solar build-out, and Egypt’s utility-scale wind and solar investments signal that the transition is no longer primarily a wealthy-country phenomenon.
Battery Storage: The Next Phase
The accelerating build-out of solar is increasingly taking place alongside battery storage deployment, enabling what Ember describes as a paradigm shift — from daytime solar to around-the-clock solar. Battery costs fell a further 45% in 2025 — a second consecutive year of sharp declines — while deployment grew 46% to an estimated 250 gigawatt hours (GWh). As a result, the world installed enough battery capacity to shift 14% of new solar generation from midday to other hours of the day.
Front-runners such as Chile and Australia installed enough grid-level storage to shift over 50% of new solar generation in 2025, with early benefits visible in lower electricity costs during peak demand periods.
The battery storage trajectory matters because it addresses the principal technical argument that has historically constrained solar’s role in baseload power supply. As storage capacity scales, the intermittency limitation that once framed solar as a supplementary rather than primary source becomes progressively less binding.
What the Transition Means for Energy Security
Alexis Abramson, dean of the Columbia University Climate School, noted that the milestone carries a national security dimension beyond the climate framing: “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.
Nicolas Fulghum, one of the authors of Ember’s report, described the milestone as likely permanent: “The rapid growth of solar and wind energy makes this milestone most likely permanent. The share of coal has fallen steadily over the last decade, from 39% in 2015 to 33% in 2025. In contrast, renewables increased from 23% to 34% in the same period and are expected to continue growing rapidly in the coming years.”
The transition is not complete, and significant infrastructure and policy gaps remain — particularly in grid expansion, transmission investment, and equitable deployment across lower-income economies. But the data from 2025 establishes that the structural direction of the global power system has changed. The century in which coal defined how the world generated electricity has ended.
