Renewables Surpass Coal in Global Electricity Generation in 2025: IEA, Ember

The United States and Israel launched a war on Iran, causing an unprecedented disruption in global energy markets by bottlenecking 20 percent of the world’s supply of oil and liquefied natural gas, Grist reported. Two reports on renewable energy were released this week by the International Energy Agency and Ember, providing insight into global energy trends before the conflict escalated oil prices.

The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental organization that publishes analyses on the global energy sector.

In 2025, solar power was the single biggest source used to meet global electricity demand, according to the International Energy Agency and Ember. In 2025, new power generation from carbon-free sources including wind, nuclear, and hydropower exceeded the overall rise in global electricity demand, the International Energy Agency and Ember stated.

In 2025, renewables edged out coal in global electricity generation for the first time in more than a century, Ember reported.

China and India comprise 42 percent of global fossil power generation. In 2025, electricity generated by fossil fuels fell in China and India for the first time this century. China and India have been building out solar, wind, and battery infrastructure.

The cost of batteries fell 45 percent in 2025. Global economic growth in 2025 was normal, Ember reported.

In 2025, emissions from advanced economies grew faster than emissions from developing countries for the first time since the 1990s, the International Energy Agency stated. In Indonesia, electric cars comprised more than 15 percent of new car sales in 2025.

The world is entering an “age of electricity,” according to the reports, as core economic activities like driving cars, heating buildings, and running industrial processes increasingly rely on electricity rather than burning oil and gas. An ever-larger share of that electricity comes from renewable sources, the analyses confirmed.

““This was a year when the economy boomed, electricity demand grew very healthily — and still all that demand growth was met with renewables,” said a lead researcher at Ember. This progress in 2025 indicates that the energy transition is no longer theoretical, with renewables beginning to displace fossil fuel sources. The plateau in fossil fuel use for electricity was not tied to a recession, signaling a structural trend away from fossil fuels. However, renewables are not displacing fossil fuels fast enough in the broader energy economy, where not all energy is generated from electricity, such as for jets, cargo ships, and many motor vehicles, the International Energy Agency reported. The pace of emissions increase is declining as renewables rise. Emissions declines were previously driven by developed countries like the United States and European Union member states. The trend reversal in emissions growth was driven by the U.S., where coal demand rose last year. Electricity use in the U.S. rose due to a harsh winter across much of the eastern part of the country and the rollout of industrial-scale power customers like data centers for artificial intelligence applications. In developing countries, trends moved in the opposite direction, such as in Indonesia where electric car sales leaped from virtually zero in the early 2020s. Many customers in Indonesia are “leapfrogging” gasoline-powered cars and purchasing an EV as their first vehicle.”

““The energy transition was conceived as something that is led by the developed world, and the developing world kind of hobbles after at a slower pace,” said a lead researcher at Ember. “We’re now seeing ‘leapfrogging’ across the world where actually developing economies are going faster in many ways than developed economies.””