23 hours ago
6
ARTICLE AD BOX
In 2025, solar power had its biggest year ever, and one country was behind most of it. China alone added 336 terawatt-hours (TWh) of new solar power, which is more than every other region in the world put together.
This single number shows just how fast China's clean energy push is moving, and how much it is shaping the world's overall energy mix. According to Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026, this rapid solar growth in China, along with strong gains in India, helped push global solar power to its highest level ever recorded. The numbers also point to a bigger shift: for the first time in a century, the world's electricity now comes more from renewables than from coal.
China's solar power boom in 2025: 336 TWh added in a single year
China's solar generation jumped by 40% in 2025, reaching a total of 336 TWh for the year. To understand how big this number really is, it helps to compare it with something familiar. China's new solar power alone was more than the entire amount of electricity used by the United Kingdom in 2025, which stood at 322 TWh. According to Ember's country data on China, solar and wind together now make up 22% of China's electricity mix, higher than both the global average and the average for Asia as a whole.
This was not a one-off jump either. Solar power in China has been growing at an exponential pace for several years in a row now, and 2025 was simply its biggest year yet.
How China's solar growth compares to the rest of the world
When you look at solar additions by region, the gap between China and everyone else becomes very clear. Outside China, the rest of the world added about 300 TWh of new solar power in total. Asia (excluding China) added around 90 TWh, North America added about 86 TWh, and Europe added close to 80 TWh.
Latin America and the Caribbean added 24 TWh, the Middle East added 10 TWh, Oceania added 6 TWh, and Africa added just 4 TWh. Put simply, China's solar additions alone were bigger than the next three regions combined.
This means that more than half of all new solar power added anywhere in the world in 2025 came from a single country.
Solar power meets 75% of global electricity demand growth in 2025
Solar was not just the fastest-growing power source in 2025, it also became the main reason the world's electricity demand could be met without burning more fossil fuels. Global solar generation rose by 636 TWh during the year, which is the largest jump ever recorded for any electricity source apart from coal's rebound after the pandemic in 2021. According to the Global Electricity Review 2026 from Ember, solar power alone met around 75% of the world's net increase in electricity demand in 2025.
When wind power is added as well, the two sources together covered almost all (99%) of the extra electricity the world needed that year.
Renewables overtake coal worldwide for the first time in a century
Perhaps the biggest milestone in the report is what this solar growth did to the bigger picture. For the first time in around 100 years, renewables produced more electricity worldwide than coal did. Renewables reached a 33.8% share of global electricity generation, just ahead of coal's 33% share.
Coal generation itself actually fell by 63 TWh in 2025, marking its first drop since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. This is a simple but important change.
Coal has been the backbone of global electricity for over a hundred years, and in 2025 it slipped to second place behind renewables for the first time.
Why China's fossil fuel generation is falling even as demand rises
One of the more surprising findings is what happened inside China itself. Even though China's overall electricity demand grew strongly in 2025, its fossil fuel generation actually went down by 56 TWh, the first such fall since 2015.
This happened because clean energy, mainly solar, grew fast enough to cover all of the extra demand on its own. In India, a similar story played out, with fossil generation dropping by 52 TWh even as the country’s economy grew.
Together, China and India represented the two largest factors behind the meagre change in global fossil fuel generation in 2025, which declined by just 0.2% as a whole.
What China’s solar dominance means for the global energy transition
China’s massive solar lead is not just about installing panels at scale. The country also owns a huge chunk of the global solar supply chain, from raw materials to finished panels, which keeps costs low and speeds up adoption across the board. This gives China enormous sway over how quickly and how cheaply the rest of the world can make the switch to solar too. It also means that global progress on clean energy is now closely linked to choices made in one country, whether it’s trade rules, manufacturing capacity or domestic policy.
As more countries try to follow a similar path, China’s 2025 numbers offer both a model to learn from and a reminder of how concentrated the world’s solar growth currently is.
English (US) ·