First Time Ever: Clean Energy Met Global Growth in Electricity Demand

Last year global electricity demand rose by 2.8 percent, but, for the first time ever, every additional bit of that new demand was met by clean power.

The structural turning point has arrived

Solar and wind together covered 99 percent, and nuclear and hydro pushed it past 100 percent. The structural turning point we have spent so many decades waiting for has finally arrived. It is very good news. Take a moment to savour it. It is one of the highlights in Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2026. Ember is an independent, not-for-profit think tank.

Other highlights in the report include:

Renewables overtook coal in 2025 for the first time in over 100 years.

Coal fell below a third of global electricity for the first time ever, and is now losing market share in every major region including Asia.

Fossil generation declined in China and India last year due to record clean power growth, balancing out small increases in the EU and the US.

The transition is global - several other growth markets, including Brazil and Pakistan, met their entire increase in electricity demand with low-carbon sources.

Battery storage deployment rose 46 percent year-on-year, while pack prices fell 45 percent.

It is important to note that the data refers to 2025, a year in which there were no economic shocks. So, thanks to the debacle in the Strait of Hormuz this year, accelerated growth in renewables is inevitable. Ironically, longtime climate denier Donald Trump is doing more than almost anyone to speed up the global shift from fossil fuels to clean energy and electric vehicles, and this crisis may be an irreversible tipping point for clean energy. For years, fossil fuel advocates promoted oil, gas and coal as “reliable” energy. That narrative has been reversed. Fossil fuels have become expensive and unreliable, while renewables are cheap, reliable and secure.

This is what Bloomberg says: "President Donald Trump calls environmentalists 'terrorists.' Yet he is responsible for destroying more oil and gas infrastructure, and possibly more fossil-fuel demand, than the most optimistic ecoterrorist could in their wildest dreams. By going to war with Iran, the president, who has been openly hostile toward the clean-energy transition, may unintentionally turn out to be one of its greatest allies."

Next week, in further reassuring news, the First International Conference on The Just Transition Away From Fossil Fuels gets underway. At the UN Cop30 climate summit last November there was considerable angst regarding progress (or, rather, lack of progress) on formulating a timeline for phasing out fossil fuels. That was because Saudi Arabia led a group of petrostates in vetoing calls to develop a “roadmap” to phase out fossil fuels globally. But the good news is that 85 countries on the losing end of that veto may soon turn the tables. Certainly, that's their plan.