Clean Energy's Share of World's Electricity Reaches 40 Percent

In a first since the 1940s, just over 40 percent of the world’s electricity was generated by clean energy last year. 40.9 percent, to be precise.

This figure is reported in the Global Electricity Review 2025 by global energy think-tank Ember. Solar power continues to be the fastest-growing energy source, with the amount of electricity it generates doubling in the last three years. Indeed, according to Ember, the amount generated by solar panels has doubled every three years since 2012. "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition," says Phil Macdonald, the managing director of Ember.

China continues to dominate the growth of solar with more than half of the increase taking place there. India's solar capacity doubled between 2023 and 2024. Though it is growing fast, solar remains a relatively small part of the global energy mix contributing just under 7 percent of global supply - that's the same as powering the entire country of India and its 1.45 billion people.

Wind contributes just over 8 percent, with hydropower contributing 14 percent making it the largest source of clean energy. Both hydro-electric and nuclear power (9 percent) are growing much more slowly than wind and solar.

Ember has been predicting for several years that emissions of the climate warming gas carbon dioxide were about to start falling. But this hasn't quite happened yet due to increasing global demand for electricity.

"Amid the noise, it's essential to focus on the real signal. Hotter weather drove the fossil generation increase in 2024, but we're very unlikely to see a similar jump in 2025," says Phil Macdonald. So, 2025 could be the year that global CO2 emissions start to fall.

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