Wind and Solar Fastest Growing New Generation in History

Carbon Brief:

Wind and solar are growing faster than any other sources of electricity in history, according to new analysis from thinktank Ember.

It says they are now growing fast enough to exceed rising demand, meaning there will be a peak in fossil fuel electricity generation – and emissions – from this year.

As a result, Ember says in its latest annual review of global electricity data that a “new era of falling fossil fuel generation is imminent”.

Renewables met a record 30% of global electricity demand in 2023 and emissions from the sector would already have peaked if not for a record fall in hydropower, the analysis says.

The rise of wind and solar has been stemming the growth of fossil fuel power, which would have been 22% higher in 2023 without them, Ember says. This would have added around 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) to annual global emissions.

Nevertheless, the growth of clean electricity sources needs to accelerate to meet the global goalof tripling renewables by 2030, Ember says. 

Meeting this goal would almost halve power sector emissions by the end of the decade, and put the world on a pathway aligned with the 1.5C climate target set in the Paris Agreement. 

In 2023, more than twice as much new electricity generation from solar was added around the world as from coal, Ember says.

The share of solar within the global energy mix reached 5.5%, up from 4.6% in 2022, according to Ember. The share of wind stayed steady at 7.8% (2,304 terawatt hours, TWh). 

No other sources of electricity generation have ever grown from 100TWh per year to 1,000TWh faster than solar and wind, Ember says. These took just eight and 12 years respectively, as shown in the figure (above).

This sits far ahead of gas generation at 28 years, coal at 32 years and hydropower at 39 years. (Nuclear also grew from 100TWh to 1,000TWh over 12 years, the Ember figure shows, but tailed off more quickly than wind).