Marking five years of Ember with five charts on the global energy transition

Solar power is transforming the world — and at record speed.

Solar electricity generation needed just eight years to grow from 100 TWh to 1,000 TWh. Then it took only three more years to double that — reaching 2,000 TWh in 2024. In each of those last three years, solar was the largest source of new electricity globally.

No other electricity source has scaled this quickly.

Driven by plummeting costs, modular design and fast and easy deployment, solar power is becoming the backbone of the new global energy system. It’s clean, scalable, and increasingly central to powering modern economies. And with battery costs also falling rapidly and their deployment accelerating, there is a growing number of projects globally that aim for round-the-clock solar electricity.

The energy transition is no longer a future vision — it’s happening now, and solar is leading the way.

Asia’s energy transition reflects the diverse pace of progress among its countries.

At the forefront is China, which continues to drive global renewable energy deployment. In 2024, it added a record 278 GW of solar and 80 GW of wind capacity (1.5X of Germany’s total installed capacity), bringing total installed wind and solar capacity to over 1,400 GW — surpassing its 2030 target six years ahead of schedule. This enabled China to meet over 80% of incremental power demand in 2024 through clean electricity.

India is consistently deploying solar and wind capacity and was ranked third globally in wind and solar deployment in 2024, with total renewable energy capacity including hydro reaching 209 GW by the end of year, up by 16% from the previous year. Wind and solar generation nearly doubled in the period between 2020 and 2024. India is now moving beyond wind and solar installation, focusing on energy storage and round-the-clock renewable energy solutions.

In contrast, ASEAN remains at an earlier stage of deployment but is picking up pace. While Vietnam leads the region with 23 GW of wind and solar capacity, most other member countries have installed less than 5 GW. Nonetheless, falling costs — down by 85% for solar and 55% for wind in 2024 versus 2010 — are creating favourable conditions for renewable energy adoption across the region.

In 2024, renewables provided nearly half (48%) of the European Union’s electricity, up from a third in 2019, driven by the rapid rise of homegrown wind and solar.

Solar power saw widespread growth, with every EU country increasing its solar generation in 2024 compared to the year before. Sixteen EU countries generated more than 10% of their electricity from solar in 2024 — well above the global average of 7%. Notably, Hungary, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus each produced over a fifth of their electricity from solar. Innovative solutions, such as agri-PV, are emerging to unlock solar potential beyond rooftops and open fields. Solar became the EU’s largest source of electricity for the first time in June 2025.

This impressive expansion of the EU solar fleet means periods of abundant solar generation are becoming more common. This trend can further reduce reliance on expensive fossil power, if solar growth is paired with batteries, smart electrification, upgraded grids and other clean flexibility tools.  While such tools are already deployable, targeted policy action is necessary to realise their full potential.

Türkiye also saw record solar growth in 2024. With strong solar potential, solar became the country’s third energy source by installed capacity after hydroelectric and gas.

Satellite monitoring is transforming global methane mitigation efforts by providing unprecedented visibility into emissions from coal, oil and gas operations. With a growing array of sensors – from wide-area flux mappers to high-resolution point-source imagers – governments, researchers, and civil society now have access to timely, independent data that can strengthen inventories and increase transparency.

Monitoring and understanding emissions is often the first step toward effective mitigation. This is especially critical for coal mine methane (CMM), which remains significantly underreported globally, due to inconsistent measurement practices and reliance on outdated emission factors.

Satellites are central to improving our understanding of emissions, and are effective in the majority of regions worldwide. However, local environmental conditions can affect the availability of satellite data in some locations or at some times of the year. This graphic highlights Ember’s first global analysis using satellite data, revealing that environmental conditions — such as cloud cover, low sunlight, and challenging terrain — can affect monitoring capacity in nearly one-third of coal, oil, and gas sites worldwide. In comparison, regions with arid conditions are ideal for satellite observations.

Understanding these differences can guide the effective deployment of satellite observations, complementing them with robust ground-based or airborne measurements – especially in high-risk or data-poor regions – to ensure accountability and accelerate methane mitigation.

The energy transition primarily consists of two disruptive trends: solar and wind are taking over electricity supply, whilst electricity is taking over energy demand. The economic and security advantages from each trend mean there is an emerging geopolitical race to excel at both.

Importantly, whilst Europe, the United States, and China all race forward with renewables, China is racing ahead of the West in electrification. China has been electrifying among the fastest in the world, growing electricity’s share of final energy by about 10 percentage points per decade. In contrast, Europe and the United States have seen little movement for a generation, illustrating that they are falling behind in the race to electrify.