For the first time in more than a century, the world made more electricity from renewables than from coal

Last year quietly rewrote the energy map. Analysis by the think tank Ember shows renewable sources generated 10,730 terawatt-hours of electricity worldwide in 2025 — 33.8 percent of all power — edging past coal for the first time in more than 100 years. Solar did most of the lifting, growing by more than 600 terawatt-hours in a single year and meeting about three-quarters of the growth in global demand. Including wind, renewables covered about 90 percent of new demand. The crossover a century in the making happened without a ceremony — panel by panel, turbine by turbine.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: market force