Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year
- Reference: 1775062400
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/04/01/renewables_generated_nearly_half_global_power/
- Source link:
The International Renewable Energy Agency's (IRENA) 2026 Renewable Capacity Statistics [1]report , published on Wednesday, found that renewables dominated new power additions last year, accounting for 85.6 percent of global capacity expansion. Solar, in turn, was the dominant renewable technology, accounting for nearly three-quarters of last year's renewable capacity additions.
Those additions totaled 692 GW in 2025, lifting installed renewable capacity by a record 15.5 percent year over year, IRENA noted. By the end of last year, renewables accounted for 49.4 percent of global installed electricity capacity, while variable renewable sources such as solar and wind represented roughly 35 percent of total capacity.
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For reference, it was only in 2023 that renewable energy sources [3]crossed the threshold of generating 30 percent of the world's electricity.
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As IRENA notes in a [6]press release , renewable energy is back in the spotlight amid the US conflict in Iran causing a spike in fuel prices and energy (i.e., oil) instability. According to IRENA Director General Francesco La Camera, conflicts like the Iranian mess are a perfect reason to push for more renewable adoption.
"A more decentralised energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient," La Camera said in a statement. "Countries that invested in the energy transition are weathering this crisis with less economic damage, as they boost energy security, resilience and competitiveness."
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Accelerating adoption is all well and good, but IRENA itself still isn't convinced last year's gains will be enough: Yes, the overall trend in renewable deployment shows renewables outpacing fossil fuel expansion, but not entirely.
Per IRENA's data, that aforementioned 85.6 percent share of new power capacity additions was actually a decrease from 2024, when renewables were about 92 percent of global capacity additions. Yes, the share of total installed power capacity in 2025 rose again, but non-renewable capacity additions also rebounded sharply last year.
"At the global level, 2025 also saw a sharp rebound in non-renewable additions, which nearly doubled compared to 2024," IRENA noted. China led that drive, with 100 GW of non-renewable capacity added last year, most of which was coal.
[8]Renewables blow past nuclear when it comes to cheap datacenter juice
[9]Trump may hate renewables, but AI datacenters still fancy cheap solar
[10]US cities are going to struggle to green up their act by 2050
[11]Senators want datacenters to come clean on power consumption
If you've been watching the datacenter and AI space, it's no surprise that non-renewable energy projects have been popular. Natural gas energy projects [12]nearly tripled in the US last year, putting America ahead of China when it comes to total gas power projects, while coal has been [13]seeing a resurgence too. In both cases, you can thank AI datacenter projects for much of that growth, along with the US government's policy of promoting [14]AI development over sustainability .
World leaders [15]pledged at COP28 in 2023 to triple installed renewable energy capacity to more than 11 TW by 2030. As of the end of 2025, the world is at 5.15 TW of renewables; along with the push to expand fossil fuels in recent years, IRENA is worried that goal won't be reached.
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"Significant acceleration will be required to meet the goal adopted at COP28 to triple installed renewable power capacity to more than 11 TW by 2030," the agency concluded. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Mar/Renewable-capacity-statistics-2026
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ac2VhSwgbCc13yNVSGZbYQAAAoQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/renewable_energy_electricity/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ac2VhSwgbCc13yNVSGZbYQAAAoQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ac2VhSwgbCc13yNVSGZbYQAAAoQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2026/Apr/Near-700-GW-Surge-in-2025-Proves-Renewable-Energy-Resilience
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ac2VhSwgbCc13yNVSGZbYQAAAoQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/26/renewables_vs_smr_datacenter/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/13/renewables_ai_datacenters/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/19/us_cities_renewables_research/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/27/senators_datacenter_power_consumption/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/ai_datacenter_boom_tripled_us_gas_power_builds/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/10/datacenter_coal_power/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/12/fire_up_gas_turbines_ai_race/
[15] https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/energy-transition/120223-cop28-leaders-pledge-to-triple-renewable-generation-capacity-by-2030
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ac2VhSwgbCc13yNVSGZbYQAAAoQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Capacity ≠ supply
Actually the question you want is how much energy is generated by renewable power? Nameplate capacity in terms of power is not the same thing as energy actually generated. Typically wind systems average about 15% or so in terms of actually producing energy compared to name plate capacity. The rest of the time the wind isn't blowing enough, or is blowing too hard, wrong time of day, wrong season of the year, etc.
A study done by the regulator in Ontario Canada found that it would take somewhere around 18,000 MW of wind, solar, and battery capacity to equal the actual energy output of a new 1,200 MW nuclear power plant (a factor of roughly 7). This meant that nuclear was much cheaper than wind and solar in terms of supplying energy (as opposed to supplying nameplate numbers). And this was not including the cost of the increased transmission lines and the consumption of additional land required for wind and solar (the nuclear plant could be sited next to existing transmission lines). Transmission lines are very expensive and very time consuming to site and build, so this is not a minor consideration. This is what led to the decision to build the SMRs now under construction near Toronto.
I read the report cited by the story. It's only a list of nameplate capacity, not about energy production. This is useful from the perspective of a manufacturer selling equipment or of a developer selling a project in terms of knowing where the market for their equipment is. It doesn't say how much energy is actually produced however.
The other big problem with the report is that it tosses hydroelectric in with wind and solar in an effort to pump up the numbers. This is very misleading as hydroelectric has been around from the very earliest days of the electric generating industry and is not part of the "renewables" industry. It is a very conventional and very mature technology and does not suffer from the same sort of intermittency that wind and solar do. Hydroelectric technology and economics are much more closely related to nuclear power than they are to wind and solar.
The one thing that is interesting about the report is that it shows that biofuels, geothermal, and tidal power are insignificant in terms of actual commercial deployment and so are probably not even worth talking about.
This is good news
However, like everything else in the world, it is not evenly distributed.
Now I'd be more interested in a report that said how much of our demand could be reliably met by renewables all the time. Or in other words, if we got rid of non-renewables, how much the lights would have to go out - especially during those long still dark cold spells we often get in winter.
Capacity ≠ supply
Nearly 50% global installed electricity capacity is nice, but we know that much of that capacity goes unused. We pay wind farms in Scotland not to generate power, for example, and solar panel capacity is unused for around half the time (when it's dark).
It would be better to know what %age of global installed electricity demand is actually met by power from renewable sources annually. Otherwise this is just another meaningless "up to" statistic.