Two independent trackers agree that renewables and coal converged to roughly a third of global electricity generation each in 2025. Ember's count puts renewables narrowly in front for the first time in over a century; the IEA's independent tally has them essentially level.
Coal generated more of the world's electricity than any other fuel every year from before the First World War. Ember, an energy think tank that has tracked global generation data since 2020, calculates that renewables' share of the global electricity mix rose from 23% in 2015 to 33.8% in 2025, while coal's share fell from 38.7% to 33.0% over the same decade — putting renewables narrowly ahead for the first time since 1919.24
The shift was driven almost entirely by solar and wind, which were a rounding error in the global mix as recently as the mid-2000s. Hydropower, the oldest and largest renewable source, grew only modestly over the same decade; the swing came from panels and turbines.2
Ember is not the only tracker of global generation. The International Energy Agency, the intergovernmental body that has published annual energy statistics since 1974, runs its own count — drawing on a different mix of national and utility data — and its numbers tell a slightly less clean-cut story. The IEA puts renewables' 2025 share at 34% and coal's at 34%, essentially level, rather than a clear crossover.1
Both counts agree on the direction and the pace: renewables rose from around 23% of the mix in 2015 to roughly a third by 2025, while coal fell from the low forties into the low-to-mid thirties.12 They disagree, by a percentage point or so, on exactly which fuel finished 2025 on top — a gap the rubric's own standards call for naming rather than smoothing over. The likely explanation is coverage and estimation method: Ember's headline figures are built from reported data for 91 countries covering 93% of global demand, with the rest estimated, while the IEA draws on a different reporting network and provisional national submissions that are still being revised.2
"Renewables" is a category, not a technology. Behind the 33.8% headline sits hydropower, still the single largest low-carbon source at 14% of global generation, followed closely by solar (8.7%) and wind (8.5%), with bioenergy and geothermal making up the remainder. Coal (33.0%) and gas (21.8%) remain the two largest individual sources; nuclear held 8.9%.23
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) tracks a different measure entirely: installed capacity, the generating potential of the machines actually in the ground. By the end of 2025, renewables accounted for 49% of global installed power capacity — nearly half — up from 46% in 2024.5 That is 15 percentage points higher than their 34% share of electricity actually generated.1
The gap is not a contradiction; it is a capacity factor. A gigawatt of solar or wind capacity sits idle whenever the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing, so it produces far less electricity over a year than a gigawatt of gas, coal or nuclear capacity that can run continuously. On Noodle News's calculation from the two agencies' figures, the average non-renewable power plant generated roughly 1.9 times as much electricity per unit of capacity as the average renewable one in 2025 — and that gap widened slightly from 2024, as more of the new capacity being built is solar.15
Almost all of the movement in Exhibit 01 traces back to one technology. Global solar generation rose from 256 terawatt-hours in 2015 to 2,778 TWh in 2025 — a 10.8-fold increase — and grew 30% in 2025 alone, the fastest rate in eight years.2 Solar's 2025 output on its own is now roughly the size of the entire European Union's electricity demand.2 China accounted for more than half of the world's solar generation growth in 2025.2
Ember reports that renewables have overtaken coal in every world region except Asia.2 That matters because Asia is where most of the world's coal is burned. China's own transition is real and fast — solar and wind reached 22% of its generation mix in 2025, above the OECD average of 20%, and China's coal-fired output fell for the first time since 20152 — but China still generates the majority of its electricity from fossil fuels, so the regional laggard is also the world's largest electricity producer.
Elsewhere the shift has been sharper. In the United States, coal's share of generation roughly halved over the past decade, from 33% in 2015 to 16% in 2025, while gas rose from 33% to 40% — a fossil-to-fossil substitution as much as a fossil-to-renewables one.3
This piece covers electricity generation only, not total energy consumption. Electricity is roughly a fifth of final global energy use; oil for transport, gas for heating and industry, and other fuels sit outside this count, so the wider energy system remains far more fossil-fuel-dependent than the 34% figure implies. Ember's full-year 2025 figures rely on complete data for 91 of 215 countries (93% of global demand); the rest are estimated, and China and India — the two largest electricity producers by far — report on different schedules and methodologies than European or North American statistical agencies, so any single-year national figure for those countries should be treated as provisional until revised. The precise year renewables overtook coal, or whether they have yet, depends on which tracker's estimation method you use — see Exhibits 01 and 02. Capacity-factor figures (Exhibit 04) are annual averages; they vary substantially by region, technology and weather year, and 2025's hydropower output was affected by drought in parts of Asia, which this piece does not adjust for.
That renewables' share is rising is not contested. Whether the pace is adequate against stated climate goals is — partly an empirical question about trajectories, partly a value question about what "adequate" means.
Renewable capacity additions hit a record 692 GW in 2025, and the IEA's central forecast has low-emissions sources (renewables plus nuclear) rising from 42% to 50% of global generation by 2030, with coal's share falling from 34% to 27%.56 On current trends, the direction of travel is unambiguous and compounding.
IRENA's own assessment is that current growth rates leave the world short of the internationally agreed goal of tripling renewable capacity to 11 terawatts by 2030, requiring additions above 1,120 GW a year for the rest of the decade — well above the 692 GW added in 2025.5 Fossil generation in absolute terms was roughly flat rather than falling in 2025, and Asia's coal fleet, the largest in the world, has not yet turned over.2
For long pieces, end on an auditable dump of the data behind the exhibits — the reader can check the work.
| Source | 2015 | 2024 | 2025 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Renewables (Ember) | 23% | — | 33.8% | Hydro, wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal |
| Coal (Ember) | 38.7% | — | 33.0% | — |
| Renewables (IEA) | 23% | 32% | 34% | 2019 value: 27% |
| Coal (IEA) | — | 35% | 34% | 2019 value: 37% |
| Gas (Ember/IEA) | — | — | 21.8% | Fifth straight year of decline |
| Nuclear (Ember) | — | — | 8.9% | — |
| Hydro (Ember) | — | — | 14.0% | Largest single renewable source |
| Solar (Ember) | — | — | 8.7% | 2,778 TWh; +30% year on year |
| Wind (Ember) | — | — | 8.5% | — |
| Solar generation, TWh (Ember) | 256 | ~2,137 | 2,778 | 2024 value implied by stated +30% YoY growth |
| Renewables' share of capacity (IRENA) | — | 46% | 49% | Installed GW, not generation |
| Renewable capacity added, GW (IRENA) | — | 585 | 692 | Record for a second straight year |
| China solar+wind share (Ember) | — | — | 22% | vs. OECD average 20%, world 17% |
| US coal share (Ember) | 33% | — | 16% | US gas share: 33%→40% over the same decade |