Renewables Officially Overtake Coal as Global Solar and Wind Forecasts Accelerate

For the first time since the dawn of the industrial revolution, renewable energy has overtaken coal to become the world’s largest source of electricity. According to comprehensive 2025 data released by the energy think tank Ember, renewables captured 33.8% of the global electricity mix, edging past coal’s 33.0%. This milestone marks a structural shift in the global economy, driven by an exponential acceleration in solar and wind deployment that continues to outpace historical forecasts.[1][5]

The sheer scale of the 2025 build-out has forced major energy agencies to rapidly revise their long-term models. Solar power alone added a record 647 gigawatts (GW) of capacity globally last year, representing an 11% year-over-year increase. To put that growth into perspective, the new solar generation added in a single year was sufficient to displace gas-fired electricity equivalent to all liquefied natural gas exports shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.[1]

Because clean power sources grew fast enough to meet 99% of all new global electricity demand, fossil fuel generation was effectively capped. Ember’s data reveals that global fossil generation actually fell by 0.2% in 2025. This represents only the fifth time this century—and the first time outside of a global economic crisis like the 2020 pandemic—that fossil fuel power generation did not increase.[1]

This tipping point is the result of a classic technological S-curve, a dynamic heavily documented by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Unlike fossil fuels, which are extracted commodities subject to geopolitical volatility, solar panels and wind turbines are manufactured technologies. They follow Wright's Law: for every cumulative doubling of production, costs fall by a predictable percentage. Solar and battery costs have plummeted by over 80% since 2012, rendering higher-cost hydrocarbons structurally uncompetitive in most global markets.[4][5]

Looking ahead to the rest of the decade, the International Energy Agency projects that the world will add a staggering 4,600 GW of new renewable capacity between 2025 and 2030. This expansion is roughly equivalent to adding the entire combined power generation capacity of China, the European Union, and Japan to the global grid in just five years. By 2030, the IEA expects renewables to supply 43% of all global power generation.[2]

Solar photovoltaics will be the undisputed engine of this growth. The IEA anticipates that solar will account for nearly 80% of all renewable electricity capacity expansion through 2030. This dominance is driven by rock-bottom module costs, increasingly efficient permitting processes in key markets, and broad social acceptance of distributed rooftop systems, which make up over 40% of the projected solar expansion.[2]

BloombergNEF’s long-term modeling extends this trajectory even further, projecting that solar energy will become the world’s largest single electricity generator by 2032. This growth is not just replacing old infrastructure; it is racing to meet a massive surge in new electricity demand. The electrification of transportation, the rise of heat pumps, and the explosive energy requirements of artificial intelligence data centers are fundamentally reshaping global load profiles.[3]

Data centers alone consumed roughly 500 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, representing nearly 2% of global electricity demand. BloombergNEF expects this figure to more than double by 2050. While fossil fuel plants will likely operate longer than previously expected to provide baseload power for these facilities, least-cost economic modeling suggests that the vast majority of this new demand will be met by utility-scale solar paired with massive battery storage deployments.[3][5]

However, the sheer velocity of this transition is creating severe growing pains for regional power grids. In mature markets like California, Spain, and parts of China, the rapid buildout of solar capacity has led to increased curtailment—where solar farms are forced to shut down because they are producing more power than the grid can absorb. In 2025, Spain logged hundreds of hours of zero or negative wholesale power prices, a dynamic that suppresses new investment.[3]

Because of these grid saturation issues and policy shifts in major economies, BloombergNEF actually forecasts a slight near-term contraction in solar installations for 2026—projecting 649 GW of additions, down slightly from 2025. This represents the first slowdown in the industry's growth in two decades, signaling a transition from a chaotic gold rush phase into a more mature, infrastructure-constrained market.[3]

The definitive solution to grid saturation is energy storage, which is currently experiencing its own exponential growth curve. Global battery storage deployment jumped nearly 50% in 2025, and BloombergNEF forecasts it will scale 17-fold to reach 3.8 terawatts by 2050. As battery costs continue to fall, the combination of cheap daytime solar and overnight battery discharge is increasingly outcompeting natural gas peaker plants on pure economics.[3][5]

Ultimately, the data from 2025 and the forecasts for 2030 confirm that the global energy transition has moved past the realm of environmental policy and into the domain of pure industrial economics. The exponential deployment of clean energy is now an unstoppable macroeconomic force, promising greater energy security, long-term price deflation, and a realistic pathway to mitigating the worst impacts of climate change.[1][4][5]