Another telling chart from Carbon Brief
Let's first look at China.
The height of the bars shows the total increase in the demand for electricity, each year, in TWh (terawatt-hours). One TWh = 1000 GWh (Gigawatt-hours) or 1 million MWh (Megawatt-hours).
So in 2020, Covid caused low growth in total demand, and this was mostly met by renewables. But in 2021, demand rebounded strongly as Covid lockdowns were partially removed, with the result that only a third of the increase was met by renewables. Excluding the jump in demand in 2021, the rise in electricity demand each year over the last 3 years is the highest it's been. And each of those three years, the percentage supplied by renewables has risen, and in 2025 it exceeded 100%.
Economic growth will increase electricity demand each year, on average, but the key point is that non-fossil supply growth (30% per annum) is much faster than total demand. Now that it's reached parity, the gap will widen. Renewables will more and more rapidly eat into coal's market share.
If you add the S-curve acceleration of EV sales, it is clear that China's emissions have peaked. Which means world emissions have peaked too, though don't expect a rapid plunge — yet.
India's story is a bit different. Yes, renewables filled more than 100% of the increase in demand last year, but that's because demand growth was low (due to an early-onset monsoon reducing temperatures below previous years', meaning less air conditioning was needed). India's growth in electricity demand is about 85 TWh per annum, but is expected to increase, while the increase in supply from renewables was just 71 TWh. So if the summer heat is typical this year, supply from coal will increase, meaning emissions will increase. But the growth rate in renewables is much higher than the growth rate in demand. These lines will soon cross over again.
India added 35GW of solar, 6GW wind and 3.5GW hydropower [capacity] in the first 11 months of 2025, with renewable energy capacity additions picking up 44% year-on-year.
Power generation from non-fossil sources grew 71TWh, led by solar at 33TWh, while total generation increased 21TWh, similarly pushing down power generation from coal and gas.
The increase in clean power is, however, below the average demand growth recorded from 2019 to 2024, at 85TWh per year, as well as below the projection for 2026-30.
This means that clean-energy growth would need to accelerate in order for coal power to see a structural peak and decline in output, rather than a short-term blip.
Meeting the government’s target for 500GW of non-fossil power capacity by 2030, set by India’s prime minister Narendra Modi in 2021, requires just such an acceleration.
[...]one major obstacle common across China, India, and Indonesia is the continued addition of new coal-fired power plants and mining capacity. The new clean energy infrastructures being built in each country creates powerful resistance from the coal industry, which will only intensify once coal demand begins to contract. This political and economic inertia threatens to slow the clean energy transition and lock in high-carbon energy systems in these countries for decades to come, making a rapid post-peak decline in emissions far from guaranteed.
The continued fall in the costs of solar panels and batteries will be a powerful countervailing force, because of course, coal is not getting any cheaper, but governments in all three countries would be wise to ban all new coal power stations immediately. They won't be needed.
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