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Global Electricity Review 2026
Fast Facts
For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, global fossil fuel electricity generation did not increase, recording a small decline of 38 TWh (-0.2%).
Solar power alone accounted for 75% of the net rise in global electricity demand in 2025, growing 30% to reach 2,778 TWh — its highest growth rate in eight years.
Renewables (solar, wind, hydro, and others) surpassed coal in global electricity generation for the first time in roughly 100 years, supplying 33.8% of global power versus coal's 33.0%.
Both China and India — historically the world's biggest drivers of fossil power growth — saw fossil generation fall in 2025, the first time that has happened in both countries simultaneously this century.
Battery storage costs fell 45% in 2025, following a 20% drop in 2024, while deployment grew 46% to an estimated 250 GWh globally.
India installed more new solar capacity than the United States in 2025 for the first time ever.
The Story Behind the Numbers
For much of this century, the story of global electricity has been one of relentless fossil fuel expansion. Every year, demand grew, and coal and gas grew with it. 2025 marks the year that pattern broke — and broke decisively.
The engine of change was solar. A record 636 TWh of new solar generation came online last year, enough to theoretically displace all LNG flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. Solar has now doubled roughly every three years and grown more than tenfold since 2015. In 2025 it overtook wind to become the world's fastest-growing electricity source, and both are expected to surpass nuclear generation by 2026.
What made 2025 particularly significant was where the shift happened. China and India together represent a massive share of global power demand and had long been the primary reason fossil generation kept climbing globally. In 2025, China's fossil generation fell by 56 TWh — its first decline since 2015 — as clean power additions outran demand growth. India's fossil generation dropped even more sharply, falling 3.3%, as record solar and wind additions combined with strong hydropower output absorbed rising demand.
The coal milestone is historic in a literal sense. Renewables haven't held a larger share of global electricity than coal since the early industrial era. Coal's share falling below one-third of global generation — while renewables crossed above one-third — is a symbolic and structural threshold that few analysts expected this soon.
Battery storage is quietly becoming the piece that makes the rest of the puzzle work. With costs falling nearly in half in a single year and deployment growing 46%, the technology that converts solar's daytime abundance into round-the-clock power is scaling rapidly. Front-runner countries like Chile and Australia can already shift more than half of their new solar generation to other hours of the day — demonstrating what the rest of the world is moving toward.
Questions Left to Answer
Will the fossil floor hold? 2025 marked a pause in fossil growth, not yet a sustained decline. Whether this becomes a consistent downward trend — particularly in middle-income countries outside China and India — remains to be seen.
Can grids keep up? The report notes that modernizing grid infrastructure and regulatory frameworks is a critical next step. Rapid solar and storage deployment creates integration challenges that policy has not fully addressed.
How will developing regions participate? The report documents clean energy scaling in major economies, but the trajectory for smaller emerging markets — which represent a growing share of future demand — is less clear from the available data.
What happens to gas? Gas was the only fossil fuel that increased generation in 2025, albeit modestly. Its role as a flexibility provider alongside growing renewables raises questions about when and how it peaks.
Can battery cost declines continue? Two consecutive years of dramatic cost drops (20% then 45%) are extraordinary. Whether that pace continues or plateaus will significantly shape the speed of the clean transition.
Source
Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026 (published April 21, 2026). Analysis covers electricity data from 215 countries, with 2025 data reported for 91 countries representing 93% of global electricity demand. Full report and dataset available at ember-energy.org
