Clean Energy Just Pushed Fossil Fuels Into Structural Decline
For the first time since 1919, renewable energy overtook coal as the world’s largest electricity source, according to Ember’s annual review. Fossil-fuel power generation fell 0.2% in 2025, a decline driven not by recession but by the sheer volume of clean capacity coming online. Solar alone grew by 636 terawatt-hours, the largest single-year increase of any electricity source ever recorded, a 30% jump. Wind added another 205 TWh. Together, renewables met 99% of global electricity demand growth, and the transition was not a rich-country phenomenon: China and India, which account for 42% of the world’s fossil-fuel generation, both saw that generation fall for the first time in 52 years. Coal slipped below a third of global electricity for the first time, while the global EV fleet displaced 1.8 million barrels of daily oil demand. The structural part matters, because previous declines in fossil generation always traced to economic downturns. This one traces to what got built. Read more here →For the first time since 1919, renewable energy overtook coal as the world’s largest electricity source, according to Ember’s annual review. Fossil-fuel power generation fell 0.2% in 2025, a decline driven not by recession but by the sheer volume of clean capacity coming online. Solar alone grew by 636 terawatt-hours, the largest single-year increase of any electricity source ever recorded, a 30% jump. Wind added another 205 TWh. Together, renewables met 99% of global electricity demand growth, and the transition was not a rich-country phenomenon: China and India, which account for 42% of the world’s fossil-fuel generation, both saw that generation fall for the first time in 52 years. Coal slipped below a third of global electricity for the first time, while the global EV fleet displaced 1.8 million barrels of daily oil demand. The structural part matters, because previous declines in fossil generation always traced to economic downturns. This one traces to what got built. Read more here →Expert summary pending. Showing the newcomer version.