Global Electricity Insights

In 2025, clean power met all global demand growth for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic. China, which accounted for the majority of fossil growth over the past decade, saw its fossil output fall for the first time since 2015 despite demand growing by 5% in 2025. With solar, wind and batteries now mature technologies, the remaining fossil-growth economies, such as India, can follow a fundamentally different path. Globally, expected clean power growth can tip fossil fuel use in the power sector from plateau to decline while aiding decarbonisation in other sectors.

2.1.1 How the world moved from fossil-fuelled growth to clean growth

The rapid acceleration of wind and solar power, particularly from 2015 onwards, first weakened and has now decoupled the relationship between electricity demand growth and fossil fuel consumption. Demand continues to grow while fossil generation is plateauing.

81% of all wind and solar generation growth since 2000 occurred in just the last ten years. In contrast, only 27% of fossil fuel growth since 2000 happened in the last ten years.

Had wind and solar not grown since 2000, fossil generation would have been 30% higher in 2025, and emissions 28% higher. This would have added 4,065 MtCO2e annually, more than the combined emissions from electricity generation in all OECD countries (3,818 MtCO2e).

Two decades of a changing landscape

In the late 2000s (2005-2009), fossil fuels still met nearly three-quarters (73%) of average annual electricity demand growth of just over 500 TWh per year, with hydro contributing 17% and wind 8%. By 2010-2014, solar had emerged for the first time at scale, but fossil fuels still dominated at 67% of demand growth.

The turning point came after 2015. Between 2015 and 2019, fossil fuels met just 36% of the increase in demand. This fell further to 29% during 2020-2024, despite average annual demand growth increasing to over 800 TWh.

In 2025, fossil fuel growth ceased entirely. Clean sources met all the growth in electricity demand, with solar alone providing three-quarters (75%) of the rise, a complete reversal of the fossil-dominated growth pattern that defined the global power sector from its inception until the mid-2010s.

2.1.2 China tips the global balance away from fossil growth – India won’t reverse it

China has been the world’s largest contributor to global fossil generation growth, but is now meeting all new demand with clean power. India, the country with the third-highest fossil generation overall and the second-highest coal generation, is unlikely to take China’s place and will not repeat fossil growth at the same scale.

China’s fossil slowdown brings global fossil generation to a plateau

Outside China, fossil generation has not increased in aggregate since 2018, down 0.6% in 2025 relative to 2018. Over the same period, China added 1,145 TWh of fossil generation, over four times larger than India’s increase (+250 TWh) and thirteen times larger than Indonesia’s (+88 TWh), the third-largest rise.

The fall in China’s fossil generation in 2025 therefore removed the world’s biggest driver of fossil growth, resulting in no net growth in global fossil generation.

Why India is set to follow a less coal-reliant growth path than China

India is already showing signs of divergence from the coal-heavy growth model experienced by China in the first two decades of the 21st century. Today, India is developing in a fundamentally different landscape, benefitting from a cost and technology environment that is far more favourable to clean energy than it was during China’s electricity demand boom.

India’s GDP per capita crossed over $10,000 (international dollars) in 2025. China reached a similar level 15 years earlier in 2010. China’s growth over the following years was fuelled by a surge in electricity demand met largely by coal power.

Similarly, India’s electricity demand is expected to grow at over 6% annually through the early 2030s. However, two structural trends suggest India will diverge from China’s path, keeping coal reliance significantly lower.

First, wind and solar power are now mature and cost-competitive. In 2010, when China was at India’s current GDP per capita level, solar power was nearly ten times as expensive as it is today. Providing firm power with solar and battery storage is now already cheaper than new coal power in India. The deployment level of wind and solar power in India stood at 205 kWh per capita in 2025, already more than five times higher than China’s (37 kWh) at the same GDP level.

Second, India’s growth is less energy-intensive. India’s electricity demand per capita is currently less than half China’s at the same GDP level, as its economy is more service-sector focused. To move from $5,000 to $10,000 GDP per capita, electricity demand per capita in India increased by about 0.5 MWh. In China, demand rose at three times that rate (around 1.5 MWh) during the same stage of development.

As a result, India is positioned to peak its coal generation much earlier in its development curve, at less than a third of China’s recent peak recorded in 2024. Other fossil fuels, such as gas and oil, play only a minor role, accounting for just 2.5% of India’s electricity generation.

The shift is already visible on the ground. In 2025, India deployed a record 37.9 GW(AC) of solar and 6.3 GW of wind. This represented a year-on-year increase in capacity additions of 54% for solar and 85% for wind, and translated into record renewable generation growth (see Chapter 1).

The future pipeline is equally robust. Utility-scale projects already under construction in India amount to 101 GW of solar, 24 GW of wind and 23 GW of hybrid wind and solar projects. These projects alone could generate enough electricity to fully meet two years of India’s expected demand growth. More projects are expected to be added to the pipeline, and India’s government is considering increasing its target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel power capacity by 2030.

2.1.3 Clean power is closing the door for remaining fossil growth

With China’s fossil generation flattening out, power sectors where fossil generation has peaked or is near a peak make up the majority of the world’s power generation. Critically, the countries with the fastest-growing fossil generation predominantly sit in sunny regions with vast untapped solar potential. The availability of low-cost solar, batteries, wind and other clean technologies means countries with growing electricity demand now have an array of tools enabling them to transition to a clean growth trajectory.

Where demand is growing, clean power is growing too

A four-year view from 2022 to 2025 reveals that most countries with rising electricity demand already met that growth primarily with clean power.

As a collective, advanced economies are already meeting demand with clean power. Clean power growth in OECD members was 1.8 times higher than demand growth from 2022 to 2025.

However, this dynamic is not limited to advanced economies. Several other growth markets, including Brazil and Pakistan, met their entire increase (100%+) in demand with low-carbon sources. In Brazil, the rapid expansion of wind and solar complemented an existing clean power base supplied by hydro, preventing an increase in gas-powered generation. In Pakistan, distributed solar power, increasingly combined with battery storage, played a pivotal role. This enabled Pakistan to grow demand by an average of 4.5% annually (2022-2025) while reducing fossil generation.

China and the United States drove the largest and third-largest rises in demand over this period. In China, demand rose by an average of 513 TWh annually, with 76% of the increase met by clean sources. In the US, clean power supplied 88% of new demand.

India, with the second-largest demand increase (101 TWh per year), met nearly half (48%) of that increase with clean power, double the 24% share in the decade prior (2012-2021). While this reflects continued reliance on fossil fuels for some of its growth, it marks a significant step-up in clean power deployment.

Other economies, such as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia still met most of their rising demand with fossil fuels. Crucially, however, countries that met less than half of their demand growth with clean power accounted for only around a quarter (26%) of growing electricity demand globally between 2022 and 2025.

Unrealised solar potential is highest in countries with growing fossil fuels

While solar has emerged as the global driver of electricity generation growth, deployment in many regions remains low. Most of the remaining economies still relying on fossil power to meet growing demand sit almost exclusively in regions with excellent solar conditions, showing the enormous potential for fossil-dependent regions to shift to clean, affordable power. Falling costs for solar and battery storage further strengthen the case for taking advantage of ample solar resources. In 2024, 90% of globally installed renewable projects were already cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative.

Nearly all power sectors that experienced growth in fossil generation between 2022 and 2025 have above-average solar conditions. The United States and China are among the few countries with significant solar deployment in this group. Among countries with the fastest recorded fossil growth (3% or more per year), almost all have lower solar generation per capita than the world average of 345 kWh, despite this group containing countries with some of the world’s highest solar insolation such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In contrast, many countries with low solar insolation have already deployed solar at scale, with the Netherlands reaching 1,553 kWh per capita. Egypt receives more than twice the sunlight of the Netherlands, yet generates just 4% as much solar per capita (67 kWh). Among high-potential countries, Australia (2,080 kWh), the United Arab Emirates (1,379 kWh) and Chile (1,117 kWh) demonstrate high deployment.

Critically, countries like India, Egypt or Indonesia do not need to match deployment rates in Australia, China or Germany to make a significant impact. Their much lower electricity demand per capita means moderate solar deployment can meet substantial shares of total demand. Egypt’s total electricity consumption per capita of 2,050 kWh is lower than Australia’s solar generation per capita alone. Additionally, because of superior solar conditions, the same capacity can produce around twice as much electricity in Egypt as in countries such as Germany or the Netherlands.

The first signs of a solar surge in sunny regions still reliant on fossil growth are already here. After years of slow progress, Saudi Arabia’s solar sector is now scaling rapidly, with some estimates suggesting over 10 GW of installed capacity as of 2025. This is set to continue with Saudi Arabia securing financing for 15 GW of new renewable capacity, including five solar projects, in late 2025 alone.

Many fossil-reliant African economies, such as Egypt, Nigeria or Algeria, are also showing signs of an emerging solar rollout. According to Ember’s tracking of solar PV exports from China, panel exports to Africa increased 48% in 2025 compared to 2024, from 12.7 GW to 18.8 GW, indicating strong demand growth for solar. Egypt imported more than twice as many panels in 2025, at 2.3 GW, compared to 1.0 GW in 2024. Algeria’s solar panel imports in 2025 (2.1 GW) were six times larger than in 2024 (0.35 GW).

2.1.4 Clean power expansion can shift fossil fuels from plateau to decline

Beyond 2025, major energy outlooks such as the IEA’s Stated Policy Scenario (STEPS) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s (BNEF) Economic Transition Scenario (ETS), as well as the current trajectory of clean power and demand growth, show clean power keeping pace with and likely exceeding electricity demand growth over the next decade. The same clean electricity can simultaneously decarbonise traditionally fossil-dependent sectors such as transport through electrification, resulting in emissions reductions across the entire economy. The scalability of solar, wind and batteries makes this dual transformation achievable.

Fossil generation is entering a plateau

Global electricity demand growth is expected to accelerate in the coming years. While 2025 demand growth (+2.8%) moderated from the high growth in 2024 (+4.3%), the two years averaged 3.5% growth, well above the 2.5% average in the previous decade (2014-2023). Clean electricity expanded by an average of 7.6% per year across 2024 and 2025. Under these trajectories, fossil generation is set to plateau before entering a more consistent decline in the early 2030s.

The pattern is consistent across major outlooks. Under the IEA’s STEPS, demand grows by an average of 3.2% annually to 2035, although more recent estimates by the IEA expect higher growth of 3.6% between 2026 and 2030. With clean generation expanding by an average of 7.2% annually under STEPS, fossil generation plateaus before declining in the 2030s to 10% below 2025 levels by 2035. BNEF’s ETS scenario expects an even larger fall in fossil generation of around 20%.

Even if demand were to grow 4.0% per year as a result of faster electrification, cooling demand and data centre growth, and clean generation growth were to remain at current rates (7.6% per year), fossil generation would experience an extended plateau with only a small rise through the early 2030s. Clean power would still meet 97% of the increase in electricity demand by 2035.

Clean power growth could yet exceed these projections. Solar and wind now comprise a much larger share of clean electricity than a decade ago, while growing faster than other low-carbon sources such as hydro and nuclear. Maintaining their recent momentum would push overall clean growth higher. In 2024 and 2025, solar and wind grew at a combined 17% per year. An overall clean power growth rate of 7.6% would mean solar and wind growth decelerates to around 13% annually, suggesting that deployment could be higher if current solar and wind growth rates continue.

Clean power enables fossil-free growth beyond the power sector

With fossil generation plateauing globally, growing electricity demand from electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps and industry can now be met predominantly with clean power. This fundamentally changes the dynamics of decarbonisation across the economy.

The transport sector demonstrates this well. In 2025, electrification of the sector continued, with electric vehicle sales reaching over 25% of the global car market and 39 countries now exceeding 10% EV market share.

As a result, EVs are becoming a structural driver of electricity demand growth. In 2025, the expanding EV fleet contributed about 8% (66 TWh) of the 849 TWh rise in global electricity demand. In 2024, EV electricity demand had increased by 46 TWh.

This electrification is directly displacing oil consumption. The total global EV fleet displaced 1.8 million barrels per day (mbpd) of oil demand in 2025, equivalent to around 13% of the United States’ crude oil production. New electric vehicles added in 2025 alone displace 0.5 mbpd. While power sector emissions remained flat in 2025, the oil demand displaced through additional transport electrification in 2025 will avoid roughly 80 million tonnes of CO2e emissions annually, more than the annual power sector emissions of the United Kingdom.

The clean electricity expansion halting the rise in fossil generation in the power sector is also decarbonising other sectors of the economy as the world enters a period of clean power growth.

Solar power has become the dominant driver of change in global power systems. It is meeting a large share of electricity demand growth and displacing fossil fuels, but primarily during daylight hours.

As solar penetration rises, especially in mature markets, flexibility is becoming the main constraint on further expansion. With falling costs and accelerating deployment, batteries are emerging as a key flexibility technology, shifting cheap daytime solar into non-sunny hours. They complement other clean flexibility tools like grid expansion and flexible demand that maximise daytime solar use but cannot bring solar to the dark hours. Batteries will play a key role in unlocking the next stage of solar growth.

With cheap batteries, solar’s potential to grow and meet an even greater share of global electricity demand is larger than ever, meaning it can remain the dominant driver of change in global power.

2.2.1 Cheap daytime solar is already transforming power systems globally

As of 2025, the rise of solar is, first and foremost, a daytime story. While annual averages show rapid growth in solar’s share of electricity, its impact is far greater when viewed by hour of the day.

In May 2025, solar peaked at around a quarter of global midday electricity demand

In May 2025, solar reached a new monthly record share of global electricity at 11% compared to 9% on average for 2025. This was not delivered equally by hour. On average, at midday when solar peaks, solar met around a quarter of global electricity demand in May, based on Ember estimates using hourly load curves from representative markets (see Methodology).

Many countries reached new record high midday solar shares well above 50%. In Hungary, the country with the highest annual average solar share, solar came close to meeting total midday demand on the average day in June. It reached 91% of generation at 1 pm on average, up 24 percentage points from the previous maximum of 67% at noon in June 2024.

Larger systems such as Germany, Spain and the Netherlands saw solar cover around two-thirds of demand on the average day during peak months, showing that it has become the dominant source of electricity during peak daylight hours in many power systems.

Rising daytime solar shares are sharply improving the business case for battery storage, as evidenced by the surge of negative prices across Europe and record curtailment in Chile. To incorporate ever more solar, especially in mature markets where midday shares are already high, further solar growth will be difficult without batteries: solar needs to be stored in the day and released at night.

While solar meets daytime demand, fossil generation keeps growing in the dark hours

In most countries, demand rose across all hours, so even when solar met the majority or all demand growth on an annual basis, fossil generation often continued to rise outside daylight hours, as evident in countries like India and the US.

In India, solar peaked at over 50 GW at midday during the average day in 2025 – doubling from 2021 and for the first time meeting a quarter of national demand during these hours. Meanwhile, coal power remained around its 2021 levels during those peak solar hours, its share falling below 60% for the first time in 2025.

However, outside daylight hours, India’s coal generation has been growing steadily alongside electricity demand and still met well over three-quarters of demand growth from 6 pm to 6 am in 2025. The need to keep coal online to meet evening demand even contributed to significant solar curtailment at midday in H2-2025 due to the inability of the coal fleet to reduce generation below technical limits.

In the United States, solar met all of the increase in daytime electricity demand in 2025 between 10:00 and 18:00, while overnight demand growth continued to be met largely by coal and gas.

Together, these cases show that expanding flexibility and, in particular, batteries are essential to meet demand growth with cheap solar electricity outside daylight hours and reduce the need for more coal power. Batteries can also respond to variations in solar generation much faster than fossil plants that have limitations to how fast they can ramp up and down, and to the minimum operational load factor beyond which they need to shut down completely, which is often costly. That makes batteries significantly more efficient providers of flexibility. In 2025, some coal power plants in India even invited bids to build batteries to enhance their flexibility, with a coal plant in China also deploying a similar solution.

2.2.2 Batteries are ready to bring a paradigm shift and unlock the second stage of global solar growth

In 2025, batteries are finally moving into the mainstream to move solar beyond daylight hours and unlock the next phase of solar expansion.

Batteries are scaling up fast as their prices drop to a new record low in 2025

Falling battery prices are driving a rapid scale-up in deployments. Battery pack prices for stationary storage applications fell to a record low of USD 70/kWh in 2025, a 45% drop from 2024. Meanwhile, global battery storage capacity additions reached an estimated 250 GWh, up 46% year-on-year. This expansion is further supported by maturing business cases that enable revenue stacking. Batteries have outgrown their initial niche role as a grid stability service and are now core infrastructure designed to store excess daytime electricity and release it in the evening and at night.

Battery economics reached a turning point in 2025. Based on Ember’s latest analysis of recent auction results in Saudi Arabia, India and Italy, alongside in-depth interviews with project developers, suppliers and analysts across global markets, dispatchable solar with batteries can now be delivered for around $76/MWh as of October 2025.

This makes it cheaper and faster to build than a new gas power plant, particularly in countries reliant on expensive LNG imports. In India, solar and battery costs to supply round-the-clock clean power at over 95% availability are now comparable to or lower than the tariffs for new coal power plants.

The world added enough new battery capacity in 2025 to shift 14% of new solar generation

This is only the beginning, as battery additions are still catching up with the pace of solar growth. In 2025, global solar generation increased by 636 TWh, equivalent to around 1,700 GWh of additional solar output on the average day. The 247 GWh of battery capacity added globally in 2025 would be enough to shift around 14% of this new daily solar generation from daytime to other hours, up from 13% in 2024 and just 5% in 2022.

In practice, batteries are not used only to shift solar. They also support wind integration and provide ancillary services such as regulating frequency and voltage to help maintain power quality and prevent blackouts – meaning only part of this battery capacity is actually dedicated to moving solar generation across the day.

Australia and Chile could shift over 50% of the new solar generation they added in 2025 with new battery capacity

Large-scale solar shifting is emerging first in markets where solar already dominates the generation mix. Markets like California, Australia and Chile are leading the way.

Among these markets, Australia and Chile stand out for adding relatively small amounts of battery capacity in absolute terms, 9 GWh and 4 GWh respectively, but large enough relative to their solar growth to make a material difference. Chile added enough battery capacity in 2025 to theoretically shift 76% of the new solar generation it added in that year, while Australia added enough to shift 53%.

In the US, battery additions in 2025 were sufficient to shift around 20% of new solar generation, reflecting rapid battery build-out in several markets, including California and Texas. California stands out because it has already moved from potential to reality. The state has been adding more battery capacity than solar since 2021, with most of the 2025 increase in solar generation being delivered in the evening.

In 2025, the EU added around 15 GWh of utility-scale battery capacity, enough to shift 9% of the new solar generation added in that year, and it has a record pipeline of projects that could quadruple battery capacity.

In Australia, batteries are setting peak evening power prices lower

Australia shows how batteries can quickly reshape power markets once deployed at scale. In Q4-2025, during the high-value evening peak hours (18:00-20:00) in the National Electricity Market, batteries set prices 36% of the time – doubling from 18% in Q4-2024, displacing gas and hydro as price setters.

This led to significantly lower price volatility compared with Q4-2024, with average spot prices of around $100 per MWh during 18:00-20:00, less than half of the Q4-2024 average spot prices during these hours. This helped bring overall prices lower, with wholesale prices averaging $50/MWh, a $39/MWh (-44%) reduction from Q4 2024.

These dynamics, with similar trends also in Q3-2025, show that batteries are already delivering tangible system benefits by reducing reliance on expensive fossil generation and stabilising prices at the most critical times of day.

In Chile, batteries are helping to curb curtailment growth

In 2025, Chile’s growing battery capacity helped curb the rise in renewables curtailment. Installed battery capacity doubled, reaching 7.6 GWh in 2025, up from 3.5 GWh in 2024, mainly from battery capacity installed at already operating solar power plants.

Without batteries, wind and solar curtailment would have increased by 43% to 8 TWh from 2024 compared to the 8% actual curtailment increase registered in 2025. The 2 TWh of potential curtailment avoided by batteries is the equivalent of 2.2% of Chile’s total electricity demand in 2025.

Batteries are ready to unlock the next stage of solar growth

With falling costs, rising deployment and clear system benefits, batteries are becoming a core enabler of the next stage of solar growth. As more power systems reach high daytime solar shares, storage will be critical to shifting clean electricity into non-sunny hours, reducing fossil generation and sustaining solar expansion.

According to the IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook, 80% of global energy demand growth is expected to come from “regions with high-quality solar irradiation”. Lower seasonal variability means solar combined with storage is no longer just a daytime solution — it can now be a nearly round-the-clock resource and the most affordable pathway to meet rapidly rising electricity demand there.