Global electricity · 2025
A Near Tie, Decades in the Making
In 2025, renewable electricity caught up with coal. The estimates differ at the margin, but the larger change is unmistakable.
Energy transitions rarely arrive as a clean, ceremonial moment. More often, years of practical decisions accumulate until the balance has quietly changed. The milestone comes later, when the change becomes impossible to overlook.
That is what happened in 2025.
The long tilt
The balance, over time
Global electricity · live timeline
2000
Ember · annual series
5,809
TWh · coal
2,860
TWh · all renewables
Power in the balance
2000
Ember · annual value
Load area follows annual generation. The beam uses a compressed relative gap so the near-level finish remains visible; the live counter carries the numeric scale. Motion between annual observations is smoothly interpolated and lands exactly on each published row; it is not monthly data.
Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, live revision dated 23 June 2026. Annual gross generation, TWh. “All renewables” combines hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy and other renewables. Ember’s live 2025 frame places renewables 226.74 TWh ahead; the separately based preliminary annex to IEA, Electricity 2026 places coal 26 TWh ahead. The estimates are not blended; both describe a near tie.
Data receipt · 26 annual observations
Two leading accounts disagree only at the margin. Ember’s live series places renewables just ahead; the International Energy Agency’s preliminary accounting gives coal a narrow lead. Their methods differ, and either estimate may still be revised. What they share is more important: both show the two sources effectively level.
In 2025, renewables drew level with coal.
The comparison is not perfectly symmetrical. Coal is one fuel; renewables are a family of sources. Even so, the meeting matters. Together, sources once far below coal had caught it.
For most of the modern power era, that entire family remained well below coal. At the beginning of the series, coal generated slightly more than twice as much electricity. Now the old distance has almost vanished.
The next quarter-century was not a simple story of one source replacing another. Both lines rose. The graph below shows the distance between them narrowing slowly for years, then almost all at once.
The crossover
All renewables drew level with coal
Global gross electricity generation by source, 2000–2025. Ember’s live series puts all renewables just ahead; the IEA’s preliminary annex records a near tie in the other direction.
Sources: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, live revision dated 23 June 2026; and IEA, Electricity 2026, February 2026 preliminary annex. The chart itself uses only Ember’s gross-generation series. “All renewables” combines solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy and other renewables. The separately based IEA annex reports 10,734 TWh for all renewables and 10,760 TWh for coal (coal +26 TWh). The 2025 Ember values are live and revisable.
Data receipt · all 26 annual values
2025 · share of global generation
The world’s electricity mix, almost in thirds
The crossover is striking because it is both sudden and slow. The last gap closed in a year; the conditions that closed it took decades to build.
Coal has not disappeared. It remains the world’s largest individual source of electricity. What changed is that renewables became large enough, together, to stand beside it in the global power mix.
Inside the total
The total changed from within
“Renewables” can sound like a single technology. It is better understood as a changing coalition.
At the beginning of the century, hydropower carried nearly the entire total. By 2025, the center of growth had shifted. Solar and wind supplied virtually all of the year’s increase. Together, they produced more renewable electricity than hydro.
2024 → 2025 · change in generation
One year moved the gap by 889 TWh
Renewables added 840 TWh while coal generation declined by 49 TWh.
−49Coal · TWh
−3Hydro · TWh
Solar and wind now make up more than half of renewable generation
Global gross renewable electricity generation by source, 2000–2025, in terawatt-hours.
Hydro
Wind
Solar
Bioenergy
Other renewables
Hydro versus the wind + solar build
Annual TWh. Hydro is the left column; wind and solar are stacked in the adjacent column.
Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, live revision dated 23 June 2026. Values are gross-generation estimates in terawatt-hours; 2025 is live and revisable. Solar includes PV and solar thermal, including distributed generation where Ember can estimate it. Hydropower excludes pumped generation where possible. Bioenergy is included; other renewables comprise geothermal, tidal and wave generation.
Data receipt · all 26 annual values
Hydropower built the floor. Wind widened it. Solar changed the slope.
That handoff helps explain why the total is moving so quickly. Hydropower depends on long project timelines and specific geography. Wind broadened the field. Solar made new generating capacity modular: it could be added in vast utility projects, on commercial roofs and behind household meters. The result is more than a larger total. It is a different pattern of growth.
2025 · net change in renewable capacity stock
Solar and wind supplied 96.8% of the increase
96.8%
Solar + wind
Shares use IRENA’s change in published year-end capacity stock; they are not gross commissioned additions.
The global current
Across time, through the grid, into one total
2000
Renewables 2,860 TWh
Coal 5,809 TWh
2000
2025
Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, live revision dated 23 June 2026. Annual generation in TWh. Both batteries share a 0–12,000 TWh scale.
The 2025 near tie is only the final frame. Set the years in motion and the deeper pattern appears.
Coal grew. Renewables grew faster.
The geography beneath the total
One current, many power systems
The global total also hides its geography. There is no single renewable power system operating at planetary scale; there are many regional systems, built from different resources and moving at different speeds.
Source: Ember, Yearly Electricity Data, live revision dated 23 June 2026. Annual generation in TWh. Ribbons show statistical contributions, not physical cross-border transmission. The battery uses a 0–12,000 TWh scale.
Asia supplied 5,350.07 TWh, or 49.9% of global renewable electricity in 2025. Europe supplied 2,124.33 TWh; North America 1,576.14; Latin America and the Caribbean 1,172.28; Africa 261.23; Oceania 152.73; and the Middle East 80.28.
2025 · geography of renewable generation
Half the world’s renewable electricity came from Asia
10,717World · TWh
5,350Asia · TWh
3,912China · TWh
Half of the world’s renewable electricity is generated in Asia.
China accounts for 73% of Asia’s total.
Asia supplied almost half of the world’s renewable electricity in 2025; China alone supplied more than a third. Other regions contributed smaller totals, but often very different mixes.
A second crossover
The machinery beneath the milestone
Energy generation tells us what the power system produced. Energy capacity tells us how much energy storage has been built. The two are related, but they are not interchangeable.
That distinction reveals a second crossover: in 2025, solar’s installed capacity moved from behind coal to ahead of it. The chart carries the distance; the direction is the story.
A different milestone
The system behind the crossover
Solar’s installed capacity passed coal
At year-end 2024, solar was 227 GW behind. One year later, it was 198 GW ahead. Capacity is measured in gigawatts, not annual electricity generated.
2025 net change in year-end capacity stock
Difference between published year-end stocks, not gross commissioned additions.
Source: IRENASTAT and IRENA, Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026. “Solar” includes photovoltaic and solar thermal capacity. Capacity is maximum net generating capacity normally installed and connected at calendar year-end; values combine on- and off-grid capacity. Changes may reflect retirements, revisions or reclassifications. IRENA combines official submissions, unofficial sources and estimates; row-level status flags are not retained in this API extract. Values shown are rounded; calculations use unrounded data.
Data receipt · source values and derived comparisons
| Series | 2024 capacity (GW) | 2025 capacity (GW) | 2025 net stock change (GW) | Solar − coal (GW) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar energy (PV + solar thermal) | 1,880.397 | 2,391.585 | +511.188 | −226.553 (2024); +198.135 (2025) |
| Coal | 2,106.949 | 2,193.450 | +86.501 | Reference series |
Solar’s net change in year-end capacity stock during 2025 was 5.9097 times coal’s. Installed capacity does not indicate how much electricity each source generated.
Capacity is not output. A gigawatt of solar and a gigawatt of coal do not generate the same amount of electricity over a year, and what is built is not always fully used.
It is, however, a record of what is being put in place. Solar and wind accounted for nearly all of the 2025 increase in renewable capacity.
The energy generation records what the system produced. The capacity crossover shows the machinery taking shape beneath it.
What the crossover does not settle
A threshold, not a finish line
There is a temptation to treat a crossover as a conclusion. It is better understood as a coordinate: a place on a much longer route.
The final graphic makes the remaining work visible. Solar capacity can be added faster than the transmission and storage needed to support it. Electricity can be abundant in one place and difficult to deliver in another. The next phase will depend as much on networks, planning and institutions as it does on turbines and modules.
Coal remains immense. Renewable growth remains uneven. Still, the near tie changes the terms of the conversation.
Renewables no longer need to prove that they can become consequential. They already operate at the scale of the power source that defined the industrial age.
The lines have converged. What comes next depends on whether grids, storage, finance and public institutions can change around them at the same speed.
Reporting note and primary sources
Graphics 02–04 use Ember’s live Yearly Electricity Data, revised 23 June 2026. Ember defines renewables as solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy and other renewables; its latest annual values may be revised. The IEA comparison comes from the preliminary 2025 annex to Electricity 2026 and is presented separately rather than blended into Ember’s series.
Graphic 05 uses IRENASTAT year-end installed-capacity data. “Solar” includes photovoltaic and solar thermal capacity. Changes are differences between published year-end stocks and may include retirements, revisions or reclassifications; they are not gross construction totals.
Primary sources: Ember Yearly Electricity Data, Ember methodology, IEA Electricity 2026, and IRENA Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026.