Clean Energy Powered 40% of Global Electricity in 2024, Report Finds (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0176982171
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/09/0451237/clean-energy-powered-40-of-global-electricity-in-2024-report-finds
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/08/clean-energy-powered-40-of-global-electricity-in-2024-report-finds
> A report by the energy thinktank Ember said the milestone was powered by a boom in solar power capacity, which has doubled in the last three years. The report found that solar farms had been the world's fastest-growing source of energy for the last 20 consecutive years.
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> Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity."
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> Overall, solar power remains a relatively small part of the global energy system. It made up almost 7% of the world's electricity last year, according to Ember, while wind power made up just over 8% of the global power system. The fast-growing technologies remain dwarfed by hydro power, which has remained relatively steady in recent years, and made up 14% of the worldâ(TM)s electricity in 2024.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/08/clean-energy-powered-40-of-global-electricity-in-2024-report-finds
Best thing is, it's not just developed countries (Score:4, Interesting)
While it's great to see that wind and solar are growing fast in the developed world, it's the developing world where the transition is really exciting. For example, Pakistan is already the sixth largest solar market worldwide. It has a shitty, expensive grid prone to lots of blackouts, so behind-the-meter is where the growth is at, and it's moving from solar alone to solar+battery as those prices decline dramatically. Reminds me of how mobile phones dominate in many African countries, and the landline stage has just been skipped out (there's lots of solar growth across Africa, too)
I expect that all this will only intensify as US tariffs push Asian solar manufacturers to look for new markets.
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Pakistan and India probable have the best conditions in terms of sunshine and wind to exploit renewables but they need their respective governments to back it. They also have the most to gain considering the demonstrable harm fossil fuels and pollution are causing to their countries.
I wouldn't call that dwarfed (Score:2)
Wind + solar matching hydro isn't what I'd call being dwarfed. Seems like a great milestone really.
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Because you confuse relative and absolute growth.
Goes to show that complacency ... (Score:2)
... was and is the actual problem. We just need to get our collective sh*t together and could've had the eco-turnaround decades ago. But we have to get knee-deep into a global ecological tilt before we start looking alive. It's kinda pathetic if you think about it.
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I don't think it was even that. Tech has improved so much that even with the massive direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies and support, renewables are cheaper and especially easier to scale in both directions (small amounts in many places).
At this point from a purely economic perspective you have to have a deeply contrarian streak to not see the value. I don't think it's that prior have realized anything deep unfortunately.
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The next big advantage for most renewables, especially solar and wind is that they are easily switchable. You can start and stop them within microseconds - just flip the switch. Compare that to coal or nuclear, which often need hours to days to switch. The only fossil based energy source coming close to solar and wind are gas turbines, which are ready within minutes.
Pundits often talk about the "base load". Coal and nuclear can not do anything else than base load, because they are too inert for anything e
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They are definitely base load plants yeah, though the weather is somewhat predictable and they can be ramped up and down over the timescale of accurate weather predictions, and of course predictive novels of grid power usage.
They also add spinning mass which is important, though that can of course be added by other means in the form of synchronous condensers.
It will be 100% soon (Score:2)
When we transition to clean, beautiful coal.
Great! (Score:2)
Now I'm waiting for the next revolution...inexpensive, efficient, large scale electrical charge storage.
Once we can cheaply and efficiently store enough of the power we generate during daylight and high wind hours we solve two problems at once:
Inexpensive, clean power as primary baseline power and distributed power sources that can be applied flexibly to do resource leveling and serve as backup power for unavailable power sources.
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The good news is that Li battery storage prices have fallen consistently for decades, and will continue to fall. It's been 19% per doubling of capacity. 2024 saw the largest drop in prices for seven years. We're now at about 115 USD per kWh. I imagine things will change quite substantially when we get to say 50 USD per kWh.
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Lithium will soon be on its way out for energy storage. Sodium ion will be way cheaper to purchase and the reduced energy density doesn't matter so much when the batteries are sitting in a shipping container. I expect LFP batteries to be the norm in cars until something better shows up although there are use cases for it there too - budget EVs and EVs destined for cold climates.
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We already have that. There's a reason grid scale battery projects are going in everywhere around the world. Even poor African nations are investing in batteries, and I see 2 battery farms being built by CATL near our wind farms when I drive to work.
Also you don't just need the grid to accept this. The cheapest electricity plan available for commercial customers where I live provides an 85% availability with 1 day notice of up to 15% outage the following day during peak hours. That is, if you can run your b
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I just did a little bit of research, inspired by this, and UK prices seem to vary between 200 and 400 USD per kWh, vs underlying costs of about 115. So there’s clearly a lot of variability and some pretty chunky markups out there, even allowing for packaging costs
I’m looking forward to prices becoming less scalp-y in years to come!
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Here commercial users pay a different rate to domestic ones, which is based on both the 15 minute price of electricity and things like power factor. For them solar and battery storage are huge benefits because they reduce their costs far more than they do for domestic users. The main issue they face is that a lot of them rent their properties, so can't just install it.
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I expect sodium ion batteries and thermal energy systems will become predominant for storing energy from the day to use at night. Sodium ion battery production is ramping up and may eventually cost half per kwh compared to lithium ion. Thermal energy systems are literally just a mass of rock / sand which is heated up and the large volume means the heat is retained for a very long time and can be converted back to energy with a turbine, or pumped through pipes to heat businesses & households.