Renewables overtake coal for power generation for first time: NPR

For the first time, renewable energy has overtaken coal as the world’s main source of electricity, a new report says, signaling a shift in the world’s reliance on environmentally harmful fossil fuels.

Renewable electricity consumption reached 34.3% of global consumption in the first half of 2025, while that of coal fell to 33.1%, according to energy think tank Ember. Renewable energy includes sources like solar, wind and hydroelectricity, as opposed to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

Highly populated developing countries like China and India were the first to move to renewable energy, Ember reports. Meanwhile, Western societies, notably the European Union and the United States, increased their coal consumption during this period.

However, global coal production fell by 0.6% in the first half compared to the same period a year earlier.

“I think most economies want to develop their clean electricity, but some are more strategic and seize the opportunity than others,” said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, senior electricity analyst at Ember.

Wiatros-Motyka said China had been particularly smart in reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. She noted that such a change gives countries more autonomy since they can reduce their dependence on energy imports from other countries.

“There has been more investment in infrastructure that facilitates clean growth (in emerging economies) than in many advanced economies,” she said. “It’s probably about some countries missing opportunities, and maybe they don’t realize it, but that’s what it’s about.”

Countries like Hungary, Pakistan and Australia have set records for solar power generation, generating 20% ​​or more of their electricity from solar power.

The report found that global carbon dioxide emissions fell slightly in the first half of the year as solar and wind energy “outpaced demand growth and led to a slight decline in fossil fuel use.”

China has been the main driver of the transition to renewable energy sources, accounting for 55% of global growth in solar production. In contrast, the United States’ share was only 14%. Renewable energy could slow down as the Trump administration moves to significantly scale back clean energy development.

While the world — including the United States — is making significant progress toward cleaner energy, growing demand is leaving renewable energy struggling to meet consumer needs, said Daniel Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University.

The technology race to integrate artificial intelligence into daily life is partly to blame.

“It’s really been an inflection point for the United States in that electricity demand in the United States has remained stable for about 20 years, and with the growth of data centers and AI and crypto, and with other growth in industries and air conditioning and so on, we’re starting to see electricity demand growing at 3% per year, rather than remaining flat or 1%,” Cohan said.

Cohan said most new power plants in the United States and abroad use wind, solar and battery power, but those plants are now being put to the test.

“It’s a question of whether the wind and solar that we’re adding are able to keep pace with the growth in demand, because if wind and solar aren’t growing fast enough, that means we have to continue to run the gas and coal power plants, which we already have, a little harder than before,” he said.

Although it’s ultimately cheaper and cleaner to rely on wind and sun for electricity once plants are operational, Cohan said financing infrastructure for renewable energy remains an obstacle.

China and other countries succeeded because they anticipated a growing desire for renewable energy and invested heavily in these alternatives.

“China took technologies originally developed in the United States at Bell Labs in the 1950s and figured out how to develop them, and relentlessly, year after year, make them cheaper and slightly more efficient each time, to the point where the cost of solar panels has fallen by more than 90 percent and the cheapest solar panels in the world are made in China,” Cohan said.

When it comes to the sustainability of humanity’s energy consumption, Cohan said, the world is poised to make notable progress in protecting the environment from the use of fossil fuels.

“Wind and solar are finally growing fast enough that not only are they offsetting some of the demand growth, but they are actually offsetting more than 100% of the demand growth,” he said.

“This is the tipping point at which we can start to see the use of fossil fuels decline,” Cohan said.