Uche Cecil Izuora
Solar generation surged again in 2025 and, for the first time, surpassed wind as a source of global electricity, the latest Statistical Review of World Energy has shown.
Meanwhile hydropower remains the largest renewable source overall, but solar is now the fastest-growing major component of the world’s renewable power supply, shows a report by Oilprice.com
Worldwide electricity generation reached about 32,202 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025. Hydroelectricity, wind, solar, and other renewable sources combined generated approximately 10,749 TWh.
That means renewables supplied about 33.4 per cent of global electricity.
Hydroelectric power remained the largest contributor at 4,479 TWh, accounting for 13.9 per cent of worldwide electricity generation. Solar reached 2,811 TWh, or 8.7 per cent of the global total, while wind generated 2,714 TWh, or 8.4 per cent.
Geothermal, biomass, and other renewable sources contributed another 745 TWh, representing 2.3 per cent.
The bigger story is the rate at which those numbers are changing. Total renewable generation increased 9.1 per cent in 2025 but virtually none of the major renewable categories grew at the same pace.
Solar generation jumped 30.1 per cent, while wind increased 8.2 per cent.
Other renewables grew 2.8 per cent while hydroelectric generation edged up just 0.4 per cent.
Measured by the actual increase in electricity generated, solar accounted for nearly three-quarters of the growth in renewable electricity during the year.
The most striking milestone in the new data is that solar generated more electricity than wind for the first time.
As recently as 2015, global wind generation was more than three times solar generation. Wind produced 832 TWh that year compared with just 257 TWh from solar.
A decade later, wind generation had more than tripled to 2,714 TWh. But solar output increased almost elevenfold, reaching 2,811 TWh.
Solar’s acceleration has been especially dramatic over the past several years. It generated just 1,061 TWh in 2022. Three years later, output was more than 2.6 times that level.
The Energy Institute highlighted solar as the fastest-scaling renewable technology in its 2026 review, noting that solar accounted for 71 per cent of the increase in renewable total energy supply during 2025.
China dominates this market and generated about 1,173 TWh of solar electricity in 2025, representing nearly 42 per cent of the global total while U.S. solar generation ranked second at 393 TWh, followed by India at 169 TWh, Japan at 111 TWh, and Germany at 92 TWh.
China’s solar generation increased another 40 per cent in 2025. U.S. output grew 28 per cent, while India’s increased 23 per cent.
These are extraordinary growth rates for technologies already operating at large scale.
Wind’s trajectory is less spectacular, the report shows but it remains an enormous source of electricity.
Global wind generation reached 2,714 TWh in 2025, up 8.2 per cent from the previous year. China again dominated, generating 1,128 TWh, or nearly 42 per cent of the world total.
The U.S. was a distant second at 469 TWh. Germany generated 134 TWh, followed by Brazil at 116 TWh and India at 104 TWh.
China’s wind output increased 13.4 per cent in 2025, while India’s jumped nearly 28 per cent. Brazil increased almost 8 per cent and in contrast, wind generation declined in several mature European markets, including Germany and Spain.
Wind is still growing globally, but solar has clearly become the faster engine of renewable expansion.
Together, solar and wind produced about 5,525 TWh in 2025, representing 17.2 per cent of all electricity generated worldwide. Their combined output was also about 23 per cent greater than global hydroelectric generation.
The report notes that though Solar is growing rapidly but at 4,479 TWh, hydro still generated substantially more electricity than either wind or solar individually.
What distinguishes hydro is maturity.
Global hydroelectric generation was already 3,880 TWh in 2015 and has increased only about 15 per cent over the subsequent decade, compared with a 226 per cent increase for wind and nearly a 1,000 per cent increase for solar.
China is also the world’s dominant hydroelectric producer, generating 1,392 TWh in 2025. Brazil ranked second at 398 TWh, followed by Canada at 348 TWh, the U.S. at 244 TWh, and Russia at about 200 TWh.
Hydropower can also vary significantly from year to year because rainfall, snowpack, and reservoir conditions affect output. Brazil’s hydroelectric generation, for example, fell 5.4% in 2025, even though Brazil remains one of the world’s largest hydro producers.
This illustrates an important distinction between capacity and generation. A hydroelectric system doesn’t necessarily produce the same amount of electricity every year simply because its installed capacity hasn’t changed.
The Statistically Review groups geothermal, biomass, and several smaller renewable technologies together. These sources generated about 745 TWh globally in 2025, up 2.8 per cent from the previous year.
According to the report, China again led at approximately 137 TWh, followed by the U.S. at 65 TWh and Brazil at 62 TWh. Germany and Japan each generated about 48 TWh.
These technologies remain significant in particular countries and regions, but globally they are growing much more slowly than solar and wind. Their combined generation has increased from 527 TWh in 2015 to 745 TWh in 2025, a gain of about 41 per cent.
Biofuels have to be considered separately because they primarily compete in transportation fuels rather than electricity generation. The Statistical Review reports biofuel consumption in barrels of oil equivalent rather than TWh.
Global biofuel consumption reached about 2.28 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025, essentially unchanged from 2024.
But beneath that flat headline were significant shifts.
Biogasoline, which includes fuels such as ethanol, grew 7% to approximately 1.27 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Biodiesel consumption fell nearly 7% to approximately 1.01 million barrels per day.
The U.S. remained the world’s largest biofuel consumer at about 749,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, although consumption fell 11 per cent in 2025. Brazil ranked second at about 540,000 barrels per day, up nearly 10 per cent.
Indonesia ranked third at 197,000 barrels per day, while India posted one of the largest percentage gains among major consumers, increasing almost 40 per cent to 111,000 barrels per day.
Unlike solar electricity, biofuels are therefore not experiencing a uniform global boom. Their prospects depend heavily on transportation policy, blending requirements, feedstock availability, vehicle technology, and regional fuel markets.
There is an important qualification to all of this impressive renewable growth. In 2025, renewable energy supply increased by about 3.2 exajoules. But total global energy demand increased by roughly 8.1 exajoules.
In other words, renewables supplied only about 40 per cent of the increase in global energy demand. They are growing rapidly, but global energy consumption is growing even faster. As a result, the expansion of renewables is still primarily adding new energy supply rather than displacing existing fossil fuel consumption.
This is an important distinction in discussions about the energy transition. Solar can grow 30 per cent in a year, wind can continue setting records, and renewables can capture an increasing share of the electricity market, while global fossil fuel consumption still rises. For fossil fuel use to begin declining on a sustained basis, low-carbon energy growth ultimately has to exceed the growth in overall energy demand by enough to begin replacing existing coal, oil, and natural gas consumption.
The 2025 data therefore tell two stories that renewable adoption is unquestionably accelerating, led overwhelmingly by solar. But rising global energy demand continues to absorb much of that new supply. The future I envisioned nearly two decades ago is arriving, but for now it is being layered on top of the existing energy system more than replacing it.
Hydropower remains the largest source of renewable electricity but is growing slowly. Wind is still expanding at a healthy rate. Solar has entered an entirely different growth regime and has now surpassed wind in annual generation. Other renewable technologies continue to contribute, but on a much smaller scale. Biofuels are mature in some markets and growing rapidly in others.
Taken together, renewables now produce roughly one-third of the world’s electricity. But the composition of that one-third is changing quickly.
If the trends of the past decade continue, the renewable electricity mix of 2035 will look very different from the one that is seen today.