Renewables covering all new power demand this year

 From Electrek

Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won’t increase. [Recall that the Covid Crash led to a deep, though short-lived, recession.  2025 is not a recession year, though 2026 may be]

Solar and wind aren’t just expanding; they’re outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%).

That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity – solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal – to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.

For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.

China and India are partly driving that shift. In China, fossil generation fell 52 TWh (-1.1%) as clean energy met all new demand, resulting from a structural change in its power system. India saw fossil generation drop 34 TWh (-3.3%), thanks to record solar and wind growth and milder weather.

Solar is doing the heavy lifting. It’s now the single biggest driver of change in the global power sector, with growth more than three times larger than any other electricity source in the first three quarters of the year.

“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember. “Historically a growth segment, fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline. China, the largest source of fossil growth, has turned a corner, signaling that reliance on fossil fuels to meet growing power demand is no longer required.”

Electricity demand rose 2.7% in the first three quarters of 2025, far slower than the 4.9% jump seen last year when extreme heatwaves pushed up cooling demand in China, India, and the US. This year’s milder weather helped take some pressure off the grid, making it easier for clean energy to close the gap.

For the first time outside of major crises such as the pandemic or the global financial crash, clean energy growth has not only kept up with demand but surpassed it. The next big question: can solar, wind, and the rest of the clean power sector keep up this pace consistently? If they can, 2025 may be remembered as the year global fossil generation plateaued. [peaked]

I talked about EMBER's report for the first 6 months of 2025, here.  The conclusions are pretty much the same.  Renewables are beating fossil fuels, partly because of slower demand growth because of cooler summers, as well as because of massive growth in wind and solar.   So it is possible that in 2026, hot summers and higher economic growth will increase demand again, by more than the rise in electricity generated by renewables.  But it is unlikely, and if it does happen, renewables will overtake demand again in 2027.  Emissions have probably peaked.  Even if their decline will be slow, at first.

Solar surging by 64% per annum

 From EMBER

Global solar installations are on track for another record year. In the first six months of 2025, the world added 380 GW of new solar capacity — 64% higher than during the same period in 2024, when 232 GW were installed. In 2024, it took until September for global solar capacity additions to surpass 350 GW, while in 2025, the milestone was reached in June.

Visit the original of this chart, here, to see the interactive version

The rapid expansion of solar capacity in recent years has made it the fastest growing source of new electricity generation. In 2024, global solar output rose by 28% (+469 TWh) compared to 2023, more than any other source.

China remains the global leader of this surge. In the first half of 2025, its installations more than doubled compared with the same period last year. As a result, China added more than twice as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined, making up 67% of the global total. In the first half of 2024, China made up 54% of global solar installations.

This growth was spurred in part by developers racing to complete projects before new rules on wind and solar compensation came into effect in June this year. While this may lead to a slowdown in the second half of the year, new clean power procurement requirements for industry and higher full-year deployment expectations from China’s solar PV association (CPIA) suggest that 2025 will surpass 2024’s record high installations.

Outside China, all other countries together installed an estimated 124 GW in the first half of 2025 — 15% higher than the first half of 2024. India recorded the second highest installations with 24 GW, a 49% increase over the already strong 16 GW added in deployment in H1-2024. The United States ranked third with 21 GW, up 4% year-on-year, despite recent moves by the US government to restrict clean power deployment. Deployment dipped slightly in Germany and Brazil. The remaining countries added 65 GW in H1-2025, 22% more than in H1-2024.

Growth in Africa is also beginning to take off, as the amount of solar panels it imported from China rose 60% in the last 12 months, as Ember reported. However, lack of access to official installation data still obscures the actual pace of solar deployment on the continent.

With deployment surging across key markets and China’s rapid scale-up pushing global installations to new highs, 2025 is on track to become another historic year for solar power. The numbers highlight not only solar’s momentum, but also its pivotal role in reshaping the global energy system.

In 2024, solar provided 6.9% of the world's electricity.  In 2014, it was 0.8%.  The growth rate in the absolute output of solar over the last 10 years has averaged 32% per annum.

Over the last year, solar output grew 28%.  Electricity demand, since 2019, has increased by 2.8% per annum.  If solar output continues to grow this fast --- and we are in the midst of an S-curve inflexion point --- and electricity demand growth remains at 2.8%  per annum, by 2027, the rise in the supply of electricity from solar alone will exceed the total growth of electricity demand.  Just from solar.  Ignore increases from wind and nuclear.  

Of course, one can construct different scenarios.  Solar growth could slow.  And demand growth could accelerate, because of the rollout of EVs and AI data centres.  I'm comfortable with the growth in solar supply:  solar panels are cheap, battery storage in cheap, and both are getting cheaper.  The world is switching to solar plus storage because it makes economic sense to do so, and will make more sense every year that passes.   Only the USA (unfortunately) is immune to this logic.  Because battery costs are falling so fast, it's entirely possible output from solar will accelerate, because previous limitations on the percentage of solar in the grid, imposed by the lack of storage, fall away.

Demand, however, will probably accelerate, because of EVs, and maybe AI data centres.  If demand growth accelerates by 50%, to 4.2% per annum, the crossover point will come in 2029.   And every year after that, solar supply will continue to rise by larger and larger amounts in absolute terms, reducing coal faster and faster.

This doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet.  For global temperatures to stop rising, total emissions have to fall to close to zero.  The growth in solar will only reduce emissions from electricity generation, which is ~30% of total electricity supply.   And, even with the very rapid growth in EVs, it will take a decade at least for the car fleet to transition after EVs reach 100% of sales.  But it's a giant beginning.  Rich countries have reduced emissions because we felt it right to do so, despite the cost.  But the rest of the world couldn't afford to do that.  Now it can, and the magic of the S-curve means that this shift  can only accelerate.  

Africa's solar surge

 From The Energy Mix

The hrowth rate hasn't just been 60% per annum for the last year.  It's average 60% per annum since June 2021.

China’s export data suggest that Africa could soon see a spike in solar energy generation, with record imports of photovoltaic panels driving a 60% overall import increase across the continent.

“South Africa and Egypt are currently the only countries with installed solar capacity measured in gigawatts, rather than megawatts,” writes global energy think tank EMBER, in a new report.

“That could be about to change.”

EMBER tracked Chinese customs data for solar panels being exported to African countries. The data showed that exports could support record growth rates for 20 countries across the continent from June 2024 to June 2025. The rate for Algeria was stunning, with incoming solar gear increasing 33-fold during that time. Zambia, Botswana, and Sudan rose eightfold, sevenfold, and sixfold, respectively, while Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Benin, Angola, and Ethiopia all more than tripled.

Overall, Chinese exports to Africa rose 60% to deliver a potential capacity of 15,032 megawatts (MW). Solar panel imports across the continent—excluding South Africa—have now tripled over the past two years from 3,734 MW to 11,248 MW.

“These solar panels will provide a lot of electricity,” says EMBER. “The solar panels imported into Sierra Leone in the last 12 months, if installed, would generate electricity equivalent to 61% of the total reported 2023 electricity generation, significantly adding to electricity supply.”

The year’s imports to Chad could similarly generate 49% of that country’s total energy generation in 2023. Solar’s share of energy generation could increase by 10% in Liberia, Somalia, Eritrea, Togo, and Benin, and 5% in 16 other countries.

EMBER says these percentages may be inflated because total electricity generation is often underestimated in sub-Saharan Africa, and the think tank’s Electricity Data Explorer does not include non-grid generation sources like the diesel generators that are widely used in many of these countries.

The destinations for China’s increasing exports across Africa have changed since the continent’s last surge of solar imports in 2023, which was largely driven by South Africa. The rise in solar capacity could replace diesel generation, which in turn might reduce oil imports for many countries. EMBER estimates that a solar panel will pay itself off in savings from reduced oil spending within months.

For example, a 420-watt solar panel that sells for around US$60 in Nigeria would produce 550 kilowatt/hours (kWh) in a year at a cost of 14 cents/kWh. Compare that to spending $60 for diesel, at a price of 66 cents per litre (at the time of EMBER’s analysis), an expense that would yield only 275 kWh of electricity, “implying a payback time of just six months” for the solar panel.

“Even with the recent diesel price rises in Nigeria, diesel is twice as expensive in many other African countries, meaning an even shorter payback [in other African countries].”

A limitation in the analysis is that it’s based on Chinese customs data for solar panels exported to Africa, EMBER writes. Exports may not stay in the African country they are exported to if they are then reshipped to another country, perhaps to dodge tariffs. Even when panels stay in that country, their installation timeline is far from certain without clear data from the importing country. That information was often unavailable for the countries in the study.

However, similar exports to Pakistan were mostly installed and led to a recent surge in solar capacity in that country. With many similar drivers for solar uptake in the two regions, EMBER suggests Africa can look forward to similar results.

(Read EMBER's report here)

 

 The decline in solar panel costs has reached the point where even poor countries want it.  Solar is rising exponentially in Africa.   If you have diesel off-grid or substitute generators, solar fits in easily.  You only need to run the generators at night, instead of all the time.   Storage costs are falling faster than solar panel costs.  In a couple of years, Africa, and other developing areas, will be installing storage as well as solar.

China isn't just greening its own economy.  It's greening the world's.

 

Solar power doesn't sleep any more

 From Electrek

A new report from global energy think tank Ember says batteries have officially hit the price point that lets solar power deliver affordable electricity almost every hour of the year in the sunniest parts of the world.

The study looked at hourly solar data from 12 cities and found that in sun-soaked places like Las Vegas, you could pair 6 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels with 17 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries and get a steady 1 GW of power nearly 24/7. [At 1 GW per hour, the battery has 17 hours of storage.  This seems a lot!] The cost? Just $104 per megawatt-hour (MWh) based on average global prices for solar and batteries in 2024. That’s a 22% drop in a year and cheaper than new coal ($118/MWh) and nuclear ($182/MWh) in many regions.

Ember calls it “24/365 solar generation,” and it’s not just a theoretical model. Cities like Muscat, Oman, and Las Vegas can hit that steady power mark for up to 99% of the hours in a year. Hyderabad, Madrid, and Buenos Aires can reach 80–95% of the way there using that same solar-plus-storage setup with some cloud cover. And even cloudier cities like Birmingham in the UK can cover about 62% of hours annually.[Manchester is famouly cloudy and wet--latitude 53 degrees north. Berlin is also 53 degrees north.  New York is only 40 degrees N.  If you also have wind in your grid, you should be able to go to 100% renewables up to latitude 53.]

“This is a turning point in the clean energy transition,” said Kostantsa Rangelova, global electricity analyst at Ember. “Around-the-clock solar is no longer a distant dream; it’s an economic reality of the world. It unlocks game-changing opportunities for energy-hungry industries like data centres and manufacturing.”

This is an enormous opportunity for sunny regions in Africa and Latin America. Manufacturers and data centers could also tap into solar-plus-storage and skip long waits (and big bills) for new grid connections.

It’s not a silver bullet for grid-wide reliability, but it lets solar carry much more of the load, especially where sunshine is abundant. Batteries also help avoid costly grid expansions by allowing up to five times more solar to plug into existing connections [provided they are co-located with the solar farm].

In 2024 alone, global battery prices dropped 40%, which helped drive down solar-plus-storage costs by 22%. Record-low tenders from countries like Saudi Arabia point to even cheaper options coming soon.

Real-world projects are already online: The UAE built the world’s first gigawatt-scale 24-hour solar facility. Arizona is already home to solar-powered data centers. And as battery tech keeps improving, round-the-clock solar could become the backbone of clean energy systems in the world’s sunniest places [and even in their less sunny places].

 

Solar passes nuclear in global electricity generation

From Jan Rosenow 

 An historic milestone: For the first time, solar power generated more electricity globally than nuclear, making it the world’s 4th largest power source.

In just 5 years, solar output nearly tripled—from 79 TWh (Apr 2020) to 233 TWh (Apr 2025). The energy transition is speeding up.

From EMBER 

My comments:

1.   Note the strong (global) seasonality, which is presumably duplicated in individual countries.  To cope with this, i.e., to allow for low insolation in winter, we'll need 50% more solar than we'll need in summer (except where air conditioning is a big component of electricity demand.)  To some extent, wind is negatively correlated with solar, so having both in your grid will make life simpler.  However, solar is getting so cheap, having "excess" solar is not a deal-breaker.
2. It's an S-curve.  It's likely to triple again over the next 5 years, too.

Wind + Solar provide 26% of China's electricity

 From Nicholas Fulghum

Wind and solar generated more than a QUARTER of China's electricity for the first month on record In April 2025, 26% of China's electricity generation was produced by wind and solar according to our latest

@ember-energy.org

data. Wind: 13.6% Solar 12.4%

As the EMBER piece says: 

The April record was driven by both wind and solar hitting individual record high shares. Wind power accounted for 13.6% of generation while solar contributed 12.4%. The rise of solar power in particular has been remarkable. The share of solar power has tripled in the last five years, from just 4.1% in April of 2020. In 2024, China installed more new solar capacity than the rest of the world combined, more than tripling its rate of installations in just two years, from around 103 GW (DC) in 2022 to 333 GW in 2024. Installations have continued at pace in 2025, with 72 GW of new solar added in Q1 alone, up 18% from Q1 2024, according to Ember’s monthly wind and solar capacity data.

The rapid build out of solar capacity in China has pushed not only the share, but also absolute solar generation to new heights. In April 2025, China hit a new record of 96 TWh of solar generation, surpassing the previous record of 89 TWh set in August of 2024. This record may soon be surpassed again as summer conditions further boost output. 

The growth in renewables is also reshaping the overall generation mix. Fossil fuel generation has already declined by 72 TWh—or 3.6%—year-on-year across the first four months of 2025, a shift that’s beginning to show structural signs.

The rate at which wind and solar are increasing means the rise in output from renewables now exceeds the rise in total demand (current running at +-3% per annum), even with electricity demand increasing because of EVs and PHEVs.   Which means, in turn, that China's emissions have peaked.  

Caveats:  growth may soar this year or next, or, for some inexplicable reason, wind and solar will stop growing.  Solar panels continue to decline in cost, and battery costs are falling even faster, meaning solar can be "firmed" easily and cheaply, so solar, at least, is likely to continue growing fast. 

  Note how wind and solar have different seasonal patterns, which means that, combined, less of both is required.  For now, gas will still be required to balance the grid when renewables are low, but the rise in EVs/PHEVs and falling capacity utilisation at coal power stations, means that China has passed peak coal and peak oil.   Since China produces +-25% of the world's emissions, that may mean that world emissions have also peaked. 

Solar's explosive growth

 From Lauren Orso (who works at EMBER)

Charting solar power's explosive global growth! From 2019 to 2024, countries have moved right (higher share, %) and up (more solar power, TWh), with the boom spanning small to large power markets.

@ember-energy.org's Global Electricity Review is out today!

[Why don't the lines all have a 45 degree slope?  Because some countries are at high latitudes]

US wind and solar now 25% of all electricity

From John Hanger

Good morning with good news: US wind & solar surge, generating 83 TWh in March 2025, up ~20% from 69 TWh in March 2024.

W&S were 24.38% of US electricity in March 2025 March W&S generation: 2025 83 TWh 2024 69 TWh 2021 52 TWh 2020 39 TWh 2015 18 TWh 4X since 2015 & 2X since 2020!

Everywhere you look, you can see wind, or solar, or wind and solar rising steadily.  In some countries, it will reach its markets share, i.e., whatever is left over after hydro and nuclear with a few years, in others it will take longer.  But we're getting there.

Pakistan's solar shock

From CleanTechnica

Pakistan isn’t the first country you’d expect to crash the global solar party. But by the end of 2024, it quietly rocketed into the top tier of solar adopters, importing a jaw-dropping 22 gigawatts worth of solar panels in a single year. That’s not a typo or a spreadsheet rounding error. That’s the kind of number that turns heads at IEA meetings and makes policy analysts double-check their databases. It certainly made me sit up and take notice when I first heard about what was happening in mid-2024.

It’s more solar than Canada has installed in total. It’s more than the UK added in the past five years. And yet it didn’t make a blip in most Western media. While the U.S. continued its decade-long existential crisis about grid interconnection queues and Europe squabbled over permitting reforms, Pakistan skipped the drama and just bought the panels.


To understand how improbable this cleantech surge really is, you have to go back to the beginning. Pakistan was born in blood and migration—wrenched from British India in 1947 in a Partition that triggered one of the largest and most violent population exchanges in history. Millions of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs fled across hastily drawn borders, and up to two million people didn’t survive the chaos. The new nation was split in two—West Pakistan and East Pakistan—separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory and political dysfunction. That arrangement collapsed in 1971 when East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh after a brutal civil war and military crackdown that left deep scars.

Then came the Cold War. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan became the launchpad for American-backed Mujahideen fighters. Guns, dollars, and militants flowed through the border for a decade, and when the Americans packed up in the early ’90s, the extremists didn’t. The U.S. came back in 2001 with another invasion, and again, Pakistan was drawn into the fire as a frontline state. For over 30 years, it was a nation perpetually reacting to someone else’s war, absorbing millions of refugees, and fending off blowback from its own intelligence games. That any sort of coordinated energy transition could emerge from that geopolitical wreckage is not just surprising—it’s remarkable.

Pakistan’s absolute greenhouse gas emissions remain modest on the global scale—roughly 490 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent as of the late 2010s—putting it well outside the top ten global emitters. But that figure masks a more nuanced story. On a per capita basis, Pakistan’s emissions hover around 2 tonnes per person, dramatically lower than the global average of over 6 tonnes and far below the 15–20 tonnes per person typical of the U.S., Canada, or Australia. It’s a similar story when you look at historical emissions: Pakistan has contributed less than 1% of cumulative global CO₂ since the Industrial Revolution.


But when measured against economic output, the picture shifts. Pakistan’s carbon intensity per unit of GDP is significantly higher than that of most developed countries—meaning it emits more carbon for each dollar of economic activity. This reflects its fossil-heavy energy mix, inefficient industrial base, and reliance on aging infrastructure. In effect, Pakistan is both under-emitting in human terms and over-emitting in economic ones—a country still trying to lift millions out of poverty without locking itself into a carbon-intensive development model. The clean tech boom now underway is a rare opportunity to shift both metrics in the right direction.

How does a country once considered a textbook fragile state leapfrog into solar hyperscale? You can’t make sense of it without going back two decades. In the early 2000s, Pakistan was better known for insurgencies and instability than infrastructure upgrades. Terror attacks were frequent, electricity shortages were the norm, and governance was, to put it kindly, patchy. Political cycles flipped with the military’s mood, floods battered the countryside, and inflation hollowed out public services. Not exactly the backdrop for a clean tech success story.

But something changed. Slowly, unevenly, Pakistan started building institutional muscle. The terrorism that plagued the country for over a decade was brought under control through a combination of military operations and negotiated truces. Civilian governments, for all their dysfunction, managed peaceful handovers of power. The technocratic class—policy analysts, engineers, civil servants—began steering the country toward energy pragmatism. It wasn’t a revolution. It was governance on hard mode, with better outcomes.


It wasn’t just Pakistan. As Kishore Mahbubani points out in Has the West Lost It?, this is part of a broader Asian playbook—one that prioritizes order, competence, and steady economic gains over ideological grandstanding. Across Asia, countries battered by conflict and colonial hangovers have been converging on a kind of strategic calm, building quietly and governing smarter. Pakistan may have taken longer to join the club, but its trajectory—fighting its way out of chaos and into functionality—is just another chapter in the region’s larger story of post-crisis, post-colonial increase in resilience.

That’s what set the stage for the current explosion in solar power. For years, Pakistan’s grid was a source of national frustration—rolling blackouts, wild tariff swings, and a chronic overreliance on imported fossil fuels. The tipping point came when utility-scale and industrial solar started making simple economic sense. With Chinese panel prices crashing through the floor and diesel generator costs spiraling out of control, even small business owners started doing the math. The answer was always the same: buy solar. Add batteries if you can afford them. Cut the grid loose.

In 2024, that decision calculus went mainstream. Import records show 22 gigawatts worth of modules flooding into the country, with many going to private-sector installations behind the meter. Warehouses, textile mills, farms—anything with a flat roof and a balance sheet. The government barely needed to nudge the market. It just removed tariffs, approved net metering, and got out of the way. Good governance.

This isn’t just a solar story, though. Wind has been building quietly in the south for years, especially in the Gharo-Jhimpir corridor. Hydropower continues to play a big role, and bagasse from the sugar industry chips in some renewable electrons too. Battery storage is the next act, mostly in the form of hybrid inverters and lithium-ion packs tucked into homes and businesses. They aren’t grid-scale yet, but they’re everywhere you’d want resilience—factories avoiding outages, households tired of flickering bulbs. The pieces are in place for a distributed energy system that doesn’t wait for the grid to catch up. Which is good, because Pakistan’s grid is not remotely ready for this volume of variable generation. Utilities are already reeling from the revenue shock as high-value customers opt out of dependence. No one likes selling electrons when your best clients are making their own. That looming utility death spiral? It’s not theoretical in Lahore or Karachi.


No clean energy narrative in 2024 is complete without a few billion dollars earmarked for electrolyzers and green ammonia export fantasies. Pakistan has joined the chorus, announcing plans for a 400 MW green hydrogen project tied to solar and wind inputs. On paper, it all looks impressive: local renewables, domestic production, value-added exports. In practice, this has all the telltale signs of falling into the hydrogen-as-energy trap. Hydrogen is a lousy carrier of energy for most end uses, with terrible round-trip efficiency and a host of infrastructure headaches. But it can make sense in industrial processes, especially for fertilizer production—something Pakistan actually needs. If policymakers keep the focus on decarbonizing ammonia and refining, rather than dreaming of hydrogen cars and home boilers, they might just avoid the detour that’s tripped up wealthier nations.

Pakistan’s electric vehicle transition is picking up momentum too, driven by a mix of foreign investment and homegrown innovation. Chinese companies have taken the lead in setting up large-scale operations, with firms like BYD announcing plans to open a production facility in Karachi and the ADM Group committing $350 million to build EV manufacturing capacity and install thousands of charging stations nationwide. These moves dovetail with Pakistan’s goal to convert 30% of all vehicles to electric by 2030.

But the real action is happening closer to the ground, where indigenous startups are rolling out electric two- and three-wheelers at a pace that could reshape urban mobility. Companies like Jolta Electric and Vlektra are assembling locally made e-motorcycles that target the country’s massive base of two-wheeler users—millions of whom rely on scooters and bikes for daily transport. With soaring petrol prices and worsening air quality in cities like Lahore and Karachi, these electric alternatives are fast becoming the obvious choice. The economics are simple: lower fuel costs, less maintenance, and in many cases, the ability to charge with rooftop solar. While car-scale EV adoption remains limited, the grassroots uptake of electric bikes and rickshaws—many of them assembled in Pakistan—is proving that the EV revolution here will likely be led from the bottom up.

All of this hardware only matters if it’s backed by credible climate policy. For a long time, Pakistan was a spectator in the global climate arena—vulnerable, poor, and preoccupied with security. But its stance shifted after joining the Paris Agreement. The initial emissions target, a 20 percent reduction from business-as-usual by 2030, was cautious and heavily conditional. Then came the 2021 update, and suddenly Pakistan was talking big: a 50 percent reduction from its projected 2030 emissions, with 15 percent of that unconditionally promised. That’s not a trivial shift. It meant serious buy-in from ministries, financing plans, and coordination across sectors.

Pakistan’s energy transformation didn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s part of a broader pivot toward climate consciousness that has taken root in both policy and politics. One of the most visible symbols of this shift is the Ten Billion Tree Tsunami, an audacious reforestation campaign launched to combat deforestation, restore degraded land, and absorb carbon emissions. It builds on the earlier Billion Tree Tsunami in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was once met with skepticism but ended up exceeding planting targets and winning international praise.

Now scaled nationwide, the initiative isn’t just about trees—it’s a public signal that the country sees climate as a front-and-center issue, not a side project. In a nation hammered by floods, droughts, and record heat, this kind of program isn’t ornamental—it’s survival strategy. More importantly, it reflects a shift in how state capacity is being applied: not to suppress or control, but to regenerate. For a country that spent decades managing crises at gunpoint or through donor dependency, the sight of civil servants mobilizing for climate resilience marks a profound change. It’s not perfect—no national program this ambitious ever is—but it’s real, it’s scaled, and it’s rooted in the same quiet competence now driving Pakistan’s clean energy boom.


The real beauty of this story is how unglamorous it is. Pakistan isn’t trying to become a Silicon Valley of solar. It’s not chasing unicorn valuations or plastering press releases with blockchain buzzwords. It’s solving energy poverty with sunlight and silicon. It’s trading diesel for distributed storage. It’s moving from grid collapse to gridless competence. It’s trading petrol for electrons. And it’s doing it at a pace that should embarrass countries with ten times the GDP.

That 22 gigawatts isn’t the result of perfect governance or unlimited funds. It’s what happens when global markets make disruptive energy products that fit in containers dirt cheap. Every country should be opening their borders wide to Chinese solar, batteries and EVs. Even Pakistan gets that, so clearly no major western country would be so foolish as to close their borders instead.

This pattern plays out across the sun-belt developing world: poor electricity infrastructure, frequent black-outs, privately-owned diesel generators, all leading individuals and business to install solar.  With diesel back-up already in place, the fact the solar only works in daylight doesn't matter.  Installing solar halves your diesel bill.  And in a couple of years, batteries will start to supplant diesel.  

This chart (hat-tip to John Hanger) shows how the percentage of electricity from solar has gone up 10-fold in 6 years, from 2.5% in 2019 to 26% in 2025.  Can it continue growing this fast?  It's an S-curve, so yes, but what is the peak?  Prolly around 65-70%, since hydro and nuclear together make up 30%. So Pakistan could reach 100% carbon-free electricity within 10 years.

Source: EMBER

New record for Chile wind + solar

 From EMBER

Chile's wind and solar generation surpassed 40% of power for the first time in December last year 📈⚡ Throughout 2024, wind and solar generated a RECORD THIRD of Chile's electricity—more than double that in 2019. 🔗 Read more: ember-energy.org/lat...

Including hydro, renewables now make up  80% of total electricity generation.

Pan-Europe wind & solar = stable output

 A most interesting thread from Sarastro on Bluesky.

The past two days we [have] seen something interesting in the European power market: continent wide balancing that is providing security of supply at the lowest prices driven by commercial incentives…

We know that solar and wind and inverse output characteristics. A system that contains both is more secure than one or other alone. This chart from @ember-energy.org makes the point on a European wide scale

 

You can see that on a European wide scale the combined output of wind and solar is less intermittent than solar and wind alone. These charts do not show the risk of hourly balancing though so you still need a source of flexible generation. [Or storage]

This morning we can see that in action. The French grid is importing power from Spain and exporting it to other markets across the French grid in Northern Europe. That’s how you get solar from southern Europe to Northern Europe and wind from the north to the south

 

But take a look at the output of the French nukes: the French have reduced nuclear output in response: they are not just wheeling power across the French system they are managing the French system for cost and using the nukes as a battery

It’s a revelation for those (like me) who have thought of nuclear has inflexible. EDF is showing us that at the heart of the European grid is a huge battery, its nuclear park, capable of firming both south solar and northern wind.

Yesterday we saw something similar with wind from the uk being imported into France and French exports to other European countries

But critically the nukes modulating output…

A couple of points:

1.  I've talked before about how wind and solar tend to balance each other, not just daily, but also seasonally.  It's not perfect, but on a continent-wide grid (as in Europe) the necessary storage/dispatchable power needed (such as gas) is significantly reduced from what would be needed if just wind or just solar was used.
2. Like Sarastro, I also did not know that nuclear could be ramped up and down.  Notice that the percentage moves are small --- roughly 20% --- but because nuclear is so large in European generation, that's enough to go a long way to balancing total grid output.  From the top chart, I estimate the seasonal variability of wind and solar together as ~10% of total output.
3. New nuclear is still much more expensive than new wind+solar combined with 5 hours of storage.  In Australia (without nuclear), 5 hours of storage with 20% overcapacity of wind and solar is enough to provide a stable grid for 99% of the time.    The tricky period seems to occur in July (mid-winter in Australia), when periods of little wind combine with low insolation and high demand for heating, a situation which is called dunkelflaute.  Even though this is a problem only 1% of the time, it would be unacceptable to close down the grid.
4. The solution, until we get better methods of long-term storage, is gas.  Currently, natural gas, but plausibly, in future, synthetic natural gas via the Sabatier process, produced using surplus green electricity.  
5. Alternatively, concentrated solar power (CSP) may do the trick.  Vast Solar, an Australian company, is busy constructing a CSP plant at Port Augusta in South Australia (on the edge of the desert, with lots of sunshine and heat --- CSP doesn't just use light, as solar panels do, it also uses infra-red, otherwise known as heat.)  CSP provides much more storage than batteries (1 hours compared with 4), so is much cheaper for long duration storage.  (Now called Vast Energy, the 30 MW CSP plant is yet to be started, with start-up now planned for Q2/2025.  However, they will now be co-producing green methanol at the plant as well)

Solar now exceeds coal in Europe

 From EMBER

For the first time, the percentage of solar in Europe's electricity generation is now bigger thanthe percentage from coal.

Solar was the fastest growing EU power source in 2024; capacity additions hit a record high and generation was 22% higher than in 2023. Solar (11%, 304 TWh) overtook coal (10%, 269 TWh) for the first time in 2024, meaning coal has fallen from being the third largest EU power source in 2019 to the sixth largest in 2024. This trend is widespread; solar is growing in every EU country, while coal is becoming increasingly marginal. More than half of EU countries either have no coal power or a share below 5% in their power mix. Accelerated clean flexibility and smart electrification are needed to sustain solar growth.

Wind and solar avoided €59 billion in fossil fuel imports since start of Green Deal

In five years of the European Green Deal, a surge in wind and solar generation is the main reason for declining fossil generation. Without wind and solar capacity added since 2019, the EU would have imported 92 billion cubic metres more of fossil gas and 55 million tonnes more of hard coal, costing €59 billion. To maximise future benefits, Member States must continue to implement reforms to accelerate wind power deployment, as delivery currently risks falling short despite cost competitiveness. [Read more here]

Unfortunately, while Europe is making rapid progress on cutting emissions, the rest of the world is not.

Close to tipping point in generation

 From EMBER

They haven't released 2024 data yet.  But assuming the share of clean electricity rises by just 10% per annum, that means it will rise by 4 percentage points a year.  This is faster than the rise in global electricity demand.  Of course, from year to year, demand will fluctuate according to the business cycle, while green supply will fluctuate because of droughts (in the case of hydro).  But the average over a couple of years will show that demand is rising by 3 to 3.5% per annum, while green supply is rising faster than that.

So, even if fossil fuel generation didn't peak in 2023, it will peak in 2024 or 2025.  Since EVs and PHEVs continue to rise as a percentage of new car sales, and therefore of the existing fleet, and since electricity generation and transport together contribute to ~50% of emissions, total global emissions have prolly peaked or will soon.   That's good news.  What's not good news is that they won't be falling anywhere near fast enough.  But at least they will be falling.

The biomass furphy

 From Just Have a Think

Two quotes:

The legal mandate to record forest biomass-fired energy as contributing to the EU's renewable energy targets has had the perverse effect of creating a demand for trees to be felled in Europe or elsewhere in order to burn them for energy, thus releasing the carbon into the atmosphere which would otherwise stay locked up in the forest, and simultaneously drastically reducing the carbon sink strength of the forest ecosystems;

and: 

The scale of this operation is astounding, with a year's worth of [wood] pellets consumed by Drax representing wood mass approximately equivalent to clearcutting a forested square extending to 18 miles [29 kilometres] on each side.

So, here's what we do.  We give subsidies to companies that plant trees, because negative emissions, and then we give subsidies companies that burn the wood to produce electricity, because carbon-neutral.  Dotty.

Emissions from electricity peaking

From EMBER

Renewables generated a record 30% of global electricity in 2023, driven by growth in solar and wind. With record construction of solar and wind in 2023, a new era of falling fossil generation is imminent. 2023 was likely the pivot point, marking peak emissions in the power sector.

The renewables revolution – led by solar and wind – is breaking records and driving ever-cleaner electricity production. The world is now at a turning point where solar and wind not only slow emissions growth, but actually start to push fossil generation into decline.

Indeed, the expansion of clean capacity would have been enough to deliver a fall in global power sector emissions in 2023. However, drought caused a five-year low in hydropower, which created a shortfall that was met in large part by coal. Nonetheless, the latest forecasts give confidence that 2024 will begin a new era of falling fossil generation, marking 2023 as the likely peak of power sector emissions.

01  Renewables provided 30% of global electricity for the first time

In 2023, growth in solar and wind pushed the world past 30% renewable electricity for the first time. Renewables have expanded from 19% of global electricity in 2000, driven by an increase in solar and wind from 0.2% in 2000 to a record 13.4% in 2023. China was the main contributor in 2023, accounting for 51% of the additional global solar generation and 60% of new global wind generation. Combined with nuclear, the world generated almost 40% of its electricity from low-carbon sources in 2023. As a result, the CO2 intensity of global power generation reached a new record low, 12% lower than its peak in 2007.

02  Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth in 2023

Solar is leading the energy revolution. It was the fastest-growing source of electricity generation for the 19th year in a row, and surpassed wind to become the largest source of new electricity for the second year running. Indeed, solar added more than twice as much new electricity as coal in 2023. The record surge in installations at the very end of 2023 means that 2024 is set for an even larger increase in solar generation.

03  Hydropower fell to a five-year low, preventing a fall in emissions in 2023

Drought conditions resulted in a record fall in hydropower generation, which dropped to a five-year low. Under normal conditions, the clean capacity added during 2023 would have been enough to enable a 1.1% fall in fossil generation. However, the shortfall in hydropower was met by an increase in coal generation, which led to a 1% increase in global power sector emissions. 95% of the coal generation rise in 2023 occurred in four countries that were severely affected by droughts: China, India, Viet Nam and Mexico.

04  Demand growth slowed in 2023, but in future it will only go up

Global electricity demand rose to a record high in 2023, with an increase of 627 TWh which is equivalent to adding the entire demand of Canada (+607 TWh). Nevertheless, the 2023 increase of 2.2% was below the average for recent years, due to a pronounced decrease in demand in OECD countries, notably the US (-1.4%) and the EU (-3.4%). In contrast, the rapid demand growth in China (+6.9%) was equivalent to the total global growth in demand in 2023. More than half of the electricity demand rise in 2023 was from five technologies: electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, electrolysers, air conditioning and data centres. The spread of these technologies will accelerate the growth in electricity demand, but overall energy demand will decline as electrification is much more efficient than fossil fuels.

05  A new era of declining power sector emissions is about to begin

Ember forecasts fossil generation to fall slightly in 2024, leading to larger falls in subsequent years. Demand growth in 2024 is expected to be higher than in 2023 (+968 TWh) but clean generation growth is forecast to be even greater (+1300 TWh), leading to a 2% fall in global fossil generation (-333 TWh). Already the rollout of clean generation, led by solar and wind, has helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the last ten years. As a result, half the world’s economies are already at least five years past a peak in electricity generation from fossil fuels. OECD countries are at the forefront of this, with power sector emissions collectively peaking in 2007 and falling 28% since then.

Note the exponential growth of solar. 
Falling battery pack as well as falling solar panel costs means this will continue.

Before you get all excited, this forecast of falling emissions from now on only applies to emissions from electricity generation.  They are about 1/3rd of total emissions, globally.   Also, to stop global temperatures rising, emissions don't just have to start declining, they have to stop.  Until they do, or at least fall to 5 or 10% of current levels, temperatures will just go on rising.  The good news is that if emissions do start falling, they'll rise more slowly.

Wind power exceeds gas in Europe in 2023

From Reuters

Wind power production outpaced gas plants in Europe for the first time last year as fossil fuel electricity generation plummeted, cutting the region's carbon emissions, data from think-tank Ember showed.

Europe is ramping up its renewable electricity generation as part of efforts to wean the bloc off Russian fuels and to help meet its climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Europe's fossil fuel power generation fell by a record 19% year-on-year in 2023, with gas-fired electricity production down 15% and coal electricity production down 26% the report by Ember showed.

At the same time wind power grew by 13% to account for 18% of Europe's overall electricity mix, the data showed.

"Europe is on a path to phasing out coal and we've now had four years in a row of falling gas generation which we believe will continue," Dave Jones, the global insights lead for climate think-tank Ember, said in an interview.

The drop in fossil fuel power and increase in renewables and nuclear generation led to a 19% drop in carbon emissions from the power sector, the report showed.

Gas plants provided almost 17% of Europe's electricity in 2023 while coal provided just over 12%, the data showed.

Nuclear was the largest single source of electricity last year, accounting for almost 23% the data showed while solar power provided 9%.

Overall renewables combined rose to a record 44% share of power in 2023.

The data showed electricity demand fell 3.4% in 2023 due to a drop in industrial consumption and amid mild weather but Jones said this is expected to rise this year as more products, such as heating and vehicles are powered by electricity.

"Renewables will need to keep pace with that demand increase in order to deliver the emissions cuts needed," Jones said.

EU fossil generation reaches record low

From EMBER

EU fossil generation hits a record low in the first half of 2023. Drop in demand drives EU fossil fuels to collapse. Wind and solar continue growing, while hydro and nuclear recover from historic lows.

EU fossil generation collapsed in the first half of 2023, falling by 17% (-86 TWh) compared to the same period in 2022. Fossil generation from January to June was the lowest since at least 2000 at 410 TWh. The drop was Europe-wide, with a fall of at least 20% in eleven countries, and more than 30% in five (Portugal, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland).

Fourteen countries saw their lowest total fossil generation on record for the period, with Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Poland and Slovenia at the lowest fossil output since at least 2000. Over summer, some countries went for significant periods without using the fossil fuels that have traditionally been bedrocks of their power systems. In June the Netherlands used coal for only five days, and saw a record seventeen consecutive days with no coal use, while Greece achieved more than 80 hours without lignite in July.

Russian gas pipeline imports also fell dramatically, slashed by 75% to 13 bcm in the first half of 2023, down from 50 bcm in the first half of 2022. As alternatives to Russian gas supply were sourced and EU storage replenished, gas prices fell below the spikes in 2022. This contributed to the fall in coal power over the first half of this year.

Coal generation decreased by a staggering 23% (-49 TWh) year-on-year, compared to 13% (-33 TWh) for gas. Coal continues to be in structural decline in Europe, and despite the volatility of the power sector since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a coal ‘comeback’ did not materialise over winter. Coal accounted for less than 10% of the EU’s electricity generation for the first time ever in May, with May and June the two lowest coal months on record.

Note how neatly wind and solar output are inversely correlated seasonally.

The first half of 2023 shows evidence of the significant effort the EU has made to accelerate the deployment of renewables, with solar capacity additions booming in particular. After record-breaking additions of 33 GW in 2022, the pace has continued in 2023. In the first six months of the year Germany added 6.5 GW (+10%) of new solar capacity, while Poland added over 2 GW (+17%) and Belgium added at least 1.2 GW (+19%). Italy installed 2.5 GW of solar in the first six months of 2023 compared to a total of 3 GW for the whole of 2022, while France added at least 600 MW in the first quarter of 2023, slightly above its deployment in the same period last year. Spain is expected to accelerate its deployment from 4.5 GW in 2022 to 7 GW this year.

This increases confidence in further robust growth in solar generation, since the additional capacity that has come online since last summer has already led to an impressive rise in measured solar generation of 13% (13 TWh) in the first half of 2023. Even this is an underestimate of the true scale of solar generation, since in many countries behind the meter distributed solar is not reported as generation but instead appears as “missing” demand.

Wind generation rose by 4.8% (+10 TWh) compared to the first six months of 2022, a modest increase. Installation rates are a mixed picture in the face of various barriers, despite countries’ increased ambitions. While France had record additions of over 850 MW in the first quarter of the year, elsewhere signs of challenges are evident. In Germany, total wind capacity only grew by 1.5 GW in the first half of 2023, and less than 2 GW of offshore wind was added across the entire EU in the same period. Rising costs have had a detrimental effect on investment in wind projects, and policies in some Member States have hindered deployment.

Despite these challenges, however, industry enthusiasm for wind remains. And with both industry and policymakers ringing alarm bells on the barriers to wind, there are some signs that the slowdown is being taken seriously, including policy changes in Poland and a concerted effort by the European Commission to address permitting delays. Existing wind capacity continues to deliver for Europe’s power system, with unusually windy conditions in July resulting in output 22% (5.5 TWh) higher than July 2022.

Following the rapid expansion of renewables ambition in recent years, both the EU and individual countries continue to break records. Wind and solar accounted for more than 30% of electricity production in the EU for the first time in both May and July, and surpassed total fossil generation in May. Over the first six months of the year seventeen countries generated record shares of power from renewables, with Greece and Romania passing 50% for the first time and Denmark and Portugal both breaking 75%. In Portugal, this was primarily from wind and solar, which accounted for more than half of total generation in both April and May. After seeing 140 hours in June in which wind and solar produced more than the entire country’s consumption, the Netherlands also hit 50% wind and solar for the first time in July, while Germany came close with a record 49% share in the same month.

Record fall in EU fossil generation this year

 From a tweet by EmberClimate

We forecast a record fall of 20% in EU fossil generation in 2023 - almost 2x the previous record in 2020.

Why? Record growth in wind & solar, falling electricity demand and a return to normal for hydro reservoirs and French nuclear plants.

European Electricity Review, 2023 

So, it can be done.  We could slash emissions from electricity generation by 10% a year.  If we got our act together.

Brazil's wind and solar exceed 20%

 From a tweet by EMBER

Brazil's wind and solar generation hit a record high in August, climbing above 20% for the first time ever.

Explore more from our latest data update.