EI's Global Energy Snapshot: Wind, Solar Boom Amid Persistent Fossil Reliance

The year 2024 registered record-breaking growth in clean energy year even as the fossil fuel use remains stubbornly high. The latest energy data as per the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy report, released by Energy Institute (EI), in collaboration with Kearney, the total energy demand rose by about 2 percent, and energy-related carbon emissions grew about 1 percent to a record 40.8 gigatonnes CO2 equivalent. Notably, all major fuels - coal, oil, gas and renewables - reached all-time highs in consumption during 2024.

This means that even as wind turbines and solar panels are booming, traditional fuels are still expanding, underscoring what analysts call an “increasingly disorderly” energy transition. Clean energy is surging at an unprecedented pace, but it hasn’t yet curbed the world’s appetite for energy or significantly dented fossil fuel reliance.

Soaring Electrification, Good News for Decarbonization

Global electricity use climbed roughly 4 percent in 2024, outpacing overall energy demand growth and indicating that more of the world’s energy needs are being met by electricity now. In the last decade, global electricity generation has grown at 2.6 percent per annum, the report noted. This is double the annual growth rate of total energy demand over the same period.

This is a positive sign for decarbonization, since electricity is the sector where renewables can most readily replace fossil fuels. Renewable power, from wind, solar, hydro, etc., supplied about 32 percent of global electricity last year, and the share is increasing.

However, because total energy use is still rising and oil, gas, and coal remain widely used, global carbon emissions from energy hit a new peak for the fourth year running. It’s a dynamic, two-sided reality - record clean energy growth on one hand, and record emissions on the other - reflecting the challenge and opportunity of the energy transition.

Solar and Wind: Fastest-Growing Energy Sources

Renewable energy generated from solar and wind is the major driver of the clean energy transition. Over the past decade, global output from wind and solar has quadrupled, lifting their combined share of world electricity generation from 13 percent to about 15 percent in just the last year.

The year 2024 saw these two sources registering a growth rate of about 16 percent, making them the fastest-growing areas of the energy system for yet another year. For comparison, this rate of expansion is nearly nine times faster than the rise in overall energy demand. As a result, wind and solar now stand as the most promising sources of renewable power. Wind farms and solar arrays together now produce a substantial portion of our electricity, with wind contributing roughly 55 percent of that duo’s combined output and solar contributing 45 percent.

By the end of 2024, total installed solar power capacity reached 1,865 gigawatts (GW) globally, a new record, and wind capacity hit 1,135 GW. Solar installations are now growing especially fast - new solar capacity outpaced wind by 4-to-1 last year.

The impact of wind and solar growth is visible in the power mix. These two sources alone met 53 percent of the increase in global electricity generation in 2024, helping satisfy rising power demand without as large an increase in fossil generation. In regions that have aggressively deployed renewables, milestones are being reached. For example, wind and solar provided 28 percent of the European Union’s electricity last year, and solar output even surpassed coal in Europe for the first time. Globally, however, fossil fuels still dominate total energy, and coal remains the single largest source of electricity.

China Leads the RE Market 

Much of the renewable surge is driven by massive investment and deployment in key markets. 

China alone accounted for about 57 percent of new wind and solar capacity added worldwide in 2024. China’s recent build-out of renewables is so large that in one year it added twice as much renewable power capacity as the United States, Europe, and India combined. China now hosts nearly half of the world’s total solar and wind capacity (about 47 percent), almost double the combined installations of the US and Europe. This points to a shifting centre of gravity in clean energy towards emerging markets.

Renewable Energy: A Cornerstone of Energy Security

Beyond climate benefits, countries are increasingly embracing clean energy for energy security and resilience reasons. The turmoil of recent years - from geopolitical conflicts to fuel price spikes - has exposed the vulnerabilities of relying heavily on imported fossil fuels.

As the report notes, investment in renewable energy projects is increasingly being seen as the cornerstone of energy security. Renewable energy is helping nations as a shock absorber for global energy volatility, thus helping countries disconnect from global fuel markets and geopolitical tensions.

China, the world’s leading investor in renewable energy, is at the forefront of realising such benefits. Whilst it is still heavily reliant on energy imports, and meeting around 25 percent of its total energy demand in 2024 by employing imported energy, renewables have helped it avoid importing around 87 EJ over the past five years. The renewable sources also reduced the import needs of Europe and the US over this same period, by 63 EJ and 34 EJ, respectively.

In sharp contrast, Japan and South Korea, economies with significant energy-intensive manufacturing bases and each reliant on energy imports for meeting over 90 percent of their total energy demand, have collectively only managed to avoid importing just under 10 EJ over the same five-year period.

Notably, renewables contributed a third of the world’s electricity supply in 2024. However, they only met just over 8 percent of total global energy demand. Thus, their potential to simultaneously deliver clean and independent energy systems for nations remains a vast, untapped opportunity, the report notes.

Need to Ensure Grid Services

While renewables enhance energy security, variable sources like wind and solar can challenge grid stability if not strategically planned. Countries like Iceland, Bhutan, and Norway have already decarbonised over half their energy systems using reliable sources like hydro and geothermal - 85 percent, 80 percent, and 52 percent, respectively. Others, including Albania and Ethiopia, have achieved 100 percent renewable power generation.

As wind and solar adoption grow, their integration must ensure that grid services such as frequency response, voltage control, inertia, and reserves are preserved. Solutions like energy storage, synthetic inertia, smart grids, interconnections, and demand response are essential to maintaining stability and resilience in renewable-powered grids, the report notes.

Efficiency Gains and Emissions Avoided

In 2024, thanks to the expanding share of renewables, the world’s energy system was effectively 7 percent more energy-efficient in delivering the same services, because less primary energy was required to meet end-use demand. 

Thus, by using more electricity from renewables, which have no conversion loss at the point of use, society needed to dig up and burn fewer total joules of coal, oil, and gas to power the economy. This made the overall energy system more efficient.

These are significant savings in fuel import bills, improving trade balances and shielding nations from supply disruptions. Yet there is a great scope of growth and a lot can be done more.

Renewables, including modern bioenergy, still meet only a little over 8 percent of total global energy demand, despite accounting for one-third of electricity generation. This means the opportunity to strengthen energy security by scaling up clean energy is largely untapped. Every percentage point increase in that share translates to less dependence on exported fuels and more stable energy costs at home.