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Times of Oman
09-04-2025
- Business
- Times of Oman
India overtakes Germany to become 3rd-largest generator of wind, solar power
India became the world's third-largest producer of electricity from wind and solar energy in 2024, overtaking Germany, to according to a new report. The sixth edition of global energy think tank Ember's Global Electricity Review said wind and solar together generated 15% of global electricity last year. India's share stood at 10%. The report said low-carbon sources, including renewables and nuclear power, together provided 40.9% of the world's electricity in 2024. This is the first time the 40% mark has been crossed since the 1940s. In India, clean sources accounted for 22% of the electricity generation. Hydropower contributed the most at 8%, while wind and solar together accounted for 10%. Globally, renewables led the growth in clean electricity, adding a record 858 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024 — 49% more than the previous record in 2022. Solar was the largest source of new electricity for the third straight year, adding 474 TWh in 2024. It was also the fastest-growing power source for the 20th year in a row. In just three years, global solar power generation doubled to 6.9% of the electricity mix. India, too, saw a rapid increase in solar power. Solar contributed 7% of the country's electricity in 2024, the generation doubling since 2021. India added 24 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in 2024, more than twice the addition in 2023, becoming the third-largest market after China and the US. It also recorded the fourth-largest increase in solar generation globally, adding 20 TWh. "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition,' said Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director. "Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity.' The report, released on Tuesday (April 8, 2025) along with an open dataset on electricity generation in 2024, covers 88 countries that account for 93% of global electricity demand and includes historic data for 215 countries. Ember's Asia Programme Director Aditya Lolla said the clean energy transition in Asia is accelerating, led by record growth in solar and other renewables. "With electricity demand set to rise across the region, a robust clean energy market is crucial for the continued expansion of clean power. This will not only strengthen energy security and economic resilience, but also help emerging countries access the benefits of a new clean energy market economy." Neshwin Rodrigues, Senior Energy Analyst at Ember, said India has made notable progress in adopting renewables but now faces a major challenge: ensuring its clean generation grows fast enough to meet rising demand. Calling India a "solar superpower", UN climate change chief Simon Stiell in February said that fully embracing the global clean energy boom would accelerate India's economic rise. As part of its climate commitments or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC in 2022, India aims to achieve 50% of its installed electric power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. In 2021, the country also announced a goal of achieving 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030. While this target was not officially included in India's updated NDCs, it remains a key guiding reference in national energy planning documents, including the 14th National Electricity Plan.
Al Jazeera
08-04-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Clean energy surges globally; China a ‘world leader': Report
The world produced more than 40 percent of its electricity from clean energy sources for the first time since World War II last year, a new report from a global energy think tank says. Staggering growth in solar generation has led the charge, doubling every three years since 2012, Ember said in its report on Tuesday. Together with nuclear power, hydroelectricity and growing wind power, low-emissions electricity generation has now reached 40.9 percent. 'Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition,' said Phil MacDonald, managing director of Ember, based in London. 'As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity.' But clean electricity is barely managing to keep abreast of soaring new demand, meaning it is not yet cutting into fossil fuels' share of the electricity market to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ember believed that was poised to happen last year. Its 2024 Global Electricity Review predicted fossil fuels' share in electricity generation was going to drop by 2 percent in 2024, and that would mark the beginning of a decades-long decline. Last year's record global temperatures and heatwaves upset that calculation, because demand for cooling raised electricity consumption by 4 percent. That meant fossil energy sources also grew by 245 terawatt-hours (TWh), but not nearly as much as renewables, which grew by a record 927TWh, depriving fossil fuels of most of their growth potential. Ember insists that renewables and other clean energy sources will eventually top rising demand from higher temperatures and other electricity demand pressures such as data centres, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. 'While demand growth is undoubtedly going to be higher than in previous years, Ember's analysis shows that clean growth is set to outpace it, making long-term investments to grow fossil [energy] generation a risky bet,' the report said. When that will happen is not clear. The answer matters, because the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental body and energy think tank, estimated in 2023 that to keep the global temperature increase to 1.5C (2.7F) by 2100, fossil fuel use has to fall by 25 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. That, in turn, meant that global investment in renewables 'needs to climb to around $4.5 trillion a year by the early 2030s to be in line with our pathway', the IEA said in its Pathway to Net Zero report in 2023. At the time, the world was at just below half that goal. All new investment in fossil fuel extraction, transport and refinement would also have to be eliminated, the IEA said. Neither of these things has yet happened. 'There's clearly a trend for clean energy sources to increase their share. I'm not sure when or if they would replace fossil fuels, which remain a part of the global energy mix,' Costis Stambolis, executive director of the Institute of Energy for Southeast Europe, an Athens-based think tank, told Al Jazeera. 'The fact that [renewables] are increasing doesn't necessarily mean they will replace fossil fuels … It depends on a complex set of energy relationships,' Stambolis said. He pointed out that a key factor in renewable energy absorption was investment in energy grids. 'You can't electrify the economy if renewable energy is being thrown out of a system that can't absorb renewable energy,' he said. Ember's report outlined a clear divergence between the world's two largest economies, the United States and China. 'China registered more than half of the global increase in both solar and wind power in 2024 and is the world leader in both clean energy manufacturing and deployment,' the report said. The US was China's mirror image in gas. It was the world's largest producer of electricity from gas last year, accounting for half of all global growth in gas-fired electricity production At 1,865TWh, US electricity from gas was more than three times larger than Russia's, which remained in second place at 538TWh. Across the European Union, gas-fired electricity generation was down by 26TWh, falling for the fifth year in a row. Ember's findings largely dovetail with those of the IEA, which this year found that renewables are now responsible for a record 38 percent of all energy consumption, including electricity, transport and heating. For the world to contain global warming to 1.5C, the IEA has said, installed renewable power capacity must triple by 2030, energy efficiency must double each year, energy sector methane emissions must fall by 75 percent and sales of electric cars and heat pumps must rise sharply.
Sky News
08-04-2025
- Business
- Sky News
'Unstoppable force' of solar power propels world to 40% clean electricity, report finds
Clean power provided 40% of the world's electricity last year for the first time since the 1940s, new figures show. Clean energy comes from nuclear and renewable sources like wind and solar. The milestone has been reached thanks to the "staggering" rise of solar, which has doubled in just three years, energy thinktank Ember said in its new report. And solar was the fastest-growing electricity source for the 20th year in a row. It now provides 7% of the world's electricity. But it remains eclipsed by wind, which grew to 8% last year, and nuclear to 9%. Hydropower - produced by running water, usually from rivers or reservoirs, and the world's oldest and largest single source of renewable power - has hovered at 14%. Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. "As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity." 1:13 Nuclear energy is considered a clean energy source because it produces almost zero greenhouse gases or other air pollutants. The report's findings come as US President Donald Trump, in charge of the world's second most polluting country, restricts offshore wind farms and seeks to expand the mining and burning of coal in a bid to fuel booming AI data centres. China and India, the world's largest and third largest polluting countries respectively, are steaming ahead with their clean power plans. More than half the world's new solar electricity came from China last year - though it is still building new coal power plants too. Professor Xunpeng Shi, president of the International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS), said: "The future of the global power system is being shaped in Asia, with China and India at the heart of the energy transition." Electricity demand on the rise Despite the rise in renewable power, electricity from more polluting fossil fuels crept up by 1.4% last year due to surging demand, meaning emissions from the sector rose too to an all-time high. Ember had previously predicted that these emissions would peak in 2023. But a series of heatwaves thwarted those expectations, as the world turned up the air conditioning to cope with hot weather turbocharged by climate change and the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has since subsided. Increases in AI, electric vehicles and heat pumps are also driving up electricity demand. Ember forecasts the growth in clean power will soon outpace the growth in demand, helping to displace fossil fuels from the system. Bruce Douglas, chief executive of the Global Renewables Alliance, said: "Despite geopolitical and economic headwinds, the renewables industry delivered an additional 858 TWh of generation to the system last year - more than the combined annual electricity consumption of the UK and France."
The Guardian
07-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Clean energy powered 40% of global electricity in 2024, report finds
The world used clean power sources to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year for the first time since the 1940s, figures show. A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years. The report found that solar farms had been the world's fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years. Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: 'Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity.' Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the world's electricity in 2024. Hydro power is one of the modern world's oldest renewable energy technologies, and made up a large proportion of global electricity in the 1940s – when the power system was about 50 times smaller than it is today. The continuing growth of solar means clean power – including nuclear and bioenergy – is on track to expand faster than the world's overall electricity demand, according to Ember. This should mean fossil fuels beginning to be squeezed out of the global power system. Ember had previously predicted that 2023 would be the year in which emissions from electricity reached a peak, after a plateau in the first half of the year. Climate experts hoped then that emissions would begin to fall, but a series of heatwaves across the globe ignited a surge in demand for electricity to power air conditioning and refrigeration systems, which caused fuel electricity to grow by 1.4% that year. The report, which accounted for 93% of the global electricity market across 88 countries, found that the surge in demand pushed emissions from the global power sector up by 1.6% to an all-time high last year. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion MacDonald said heatwaves were unlikely to ignite a similar demand surge in the year ahead – but the increasing use of electricity to power artificial intelligence, datacentres, electric vehicles and heat pumps was expected to play a bigger role in the world's appetite for electricity. Combined, these technologies accounted for a 0.7% increase in global electricity demand in 2024, double what they contributed five years ago, the report found. 'The world is watching how technologies like AI and EVs will drive electricity demand,' MacDonald said. 'It's clear that booming solar and wind are comfortably set to deliver, and those expecting fossil fuel generation to keep rising will be disappointed.'
