{"id":82081,"date":"2025-10-16T11:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T11:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/82081\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T11:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T11:49:12","slug":"renewable-energy-overtook-coal-as-the-worlds-top-power-source-for-the-first-time-marking-a-new-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/82081\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewable Energy Overtook Coal As the World\u2019s Top Power Source for the First Time, Marking a New Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/a>Credit: Pixabay.<\/p>\n

For the first time in history, clean energy has outshone coal. In the first half of 2025, renewables led by solar and wind generated more electricity worldwide than coal, according to new data from Ember, a global energy think tank.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall \u2014 we\u2019re talking globally \u2014 renewables overtook coal,\u201d said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, a senior electricity analyst at Ember, in an interview with Grist<\/a>. \u201cAnd I expect this to hold.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a milestone decades in the making. Renewable sources supplied 34.3% of the world\u2019s electricity between January and June 2025, while coal slipped to 33.1%, Ember found<\/a>. For an energy system that\u2019s been hooked on fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, this is nothing short of revolutionary.<\/p>\n

A Crucial Turning Point<\/p>\n

Ember calls this a \u201ccrucial turning point.\u201d The growth of solar and wind didn\u2019t just meet rising global electricity demand \u2014 it exceeded it, leading to a slight decline in fossil fuel use for the first time.<\/p>\n

Solar power did most of the heavy lifting, providing a staggering 83% of the increase in electricity demand, and it\u2019s now been the largest source of new electricity worldwide for three consecutive years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment marks the beginning of a shift where clean power is keeping pace with demand growth,\u201d Wiatros-Motyka told the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Graph <\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly thanks to the wild plummet in solar prices. Since 1975, the cost of solar power has fallen by 99.9%. Many of the fastest adopters are in the Global South. Nearly 58% of global solar generation now comes from lower-income countries.<\/p>\n

Pakistan imported enough panels in 2024 to generate 17 gigawatts of solar power \u2014 double the previous year, and roughly one-third of the country\u2019s total electricity capacity. Across Africa, solar imports rose 60%, led by South Africa, Nigeria, and Algeria.<\/p>\n

\"Graph <\/a><\/p>\n

In China, clean energy growth is so ferocious, frankly, it sounds ridiculous. The country added more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined<\/a>, Ember found, pushing fossil fuel generation down 2%. China now accounts for 55% of global solar growth.<\/p>\n

And this transformation is paying off in more ways than one. As Wiatros-Motyka told NPR<\/a>, the shift toward renewables gives countries greater independence from imported fuel. \u201cThere has been more investment in infrastructure that facilitates clean growth [in emerging economies] than in many advanced economies,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is probably about some countries missing the opportunities, and maybe they don\u2019t realize it, but that\u2019s what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Slows Down, But the World Speeds Up<\/p>\n

\"Graph <\/a><\/p>\n

While developing nations are racing ahead, richer economies are faltering. In the United States, coal-fired power generation rose 17% in early 2025, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has halved its forecast for U.S. renewable growth this decade, from 500 gigawatts to 250.<\/p>\n

Congress voted in July to phase out long-standing tax credits for wind and solar, and the Trump administration has moved to halt or delay dozens of renewable projects. But even a Trump administration that bears an almost visceral hate for wind turbines and solar panels can do little to stop the inevitable. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey can slow it down; they can do a lot more damage than I thought they could,\u201d said Robert Brecha, a senior adviser at Climate Analytics. \u201cBut they can\u2019t stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Europe, poor weather rather than politics dimmed the outlook. Months of weak wind and drought shrank the continent\u2019s renewable output, forcing a 14% rise in gas-fired generation.<\/p>\n

Even so, the global story is clear: coal\u2019s dominance is ending. The IEA still lists coal as the single largest individual energy source, but its share is shrinking fast.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Solar Royalty and the AI Energy Crunch<\/p>\n

China is the epicenter of renewable growth. China manufactures a vast majority of the world\u2019s solar panels, accounting for around 80% of global production<\/a>. In the first half of 2023, China\u2019s solar module exports alone were 114 GW, a 34% increase from the previous year. As Daniel Cohan, a civil and environmental engineer at Rice University, told NPR, \u201cChina took technologies that were originally developed in the United States back in Bell Labs in the 1950s and figured out how to scale them up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is a clean tech manufacturing empire, which extends to other verticals besides solar. In August 2025 alone, China\u2019s clean tech exports hit a record $20 billion, with surging sales of electric vehicles and batteries.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the U.S. is facing a new kind of problem barely anyone anticipated just ten years ago: energy-hungry data.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has really been an inflection point for the United States,\u201d Cohan said. \u201cWith the growth of data centers, and AI and crypto, and other growth from industries and air conditioning, we\u2019re starting to see electricity demand grow 3% per year, rather than be flat or 1%.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI data centers \u2014 those massive warehouses of servers that feed machine learning \u2014 are forcing utilities to scramble for new generation sources, often defaulting back to gas and coal when renewables can\u2019t scale fast enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a question of whether this wind and solar that we\u2019re adding is able to keep pace with the demand growth,\u201d Cohan added. \u201cIf wind and solar don\u2019t grow fast enough, that means we have to keep running the gas and coal power plants that we already have a little bit harder than before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Pixabay. For the first time in history, clean energy has outshone coal. In the first half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[607,273,111,139,69,147,12914,21448,4154],"class_list":{"0":"post-82081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-solar-energy","15":"tag-solar-panels","16":"tag-solar-power"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}