Renewable energy outpaces coal for global electricity generation in historic first, report says

[essentialsaltes]

Renewable electricity use rose to 34.3% of global consumption in the first half of 2025, while coal's use fell to 33.1%, the energy think tank Ember found. Renewable energies include sources like solar, wind and hydro, as opposed to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

Populous developing countries like China and India led the charge in making the switch to renewable energies, Ember reports. Meanwhile, Western societies including the European Union and the United States increased their consumption of coal during this period.

China has been the largest driver in the move to renewable energy sources, accounting for 55% of global solar generation growth. The United States' share, by contrast, was just 14%. Renewables might slow as the Trump administration moves to sharply reduce clean-energy development.

"China took technologies that were originally developed in the United States back in Bell Labs in the 1950s and figured out how to scale them up, and just relentlessly year after year make them cheaper and cheaper and slightly better performing each time to the point that the cost of solar panels has fallen by well over 90% and the cheapest solar panels in the world are being manufactured in China," Cohan said.

in related news...

California says goodbye to coal and hello to cleaner electricity​

One of the most consequential moments in California’s drive to beat back climate change will take place next month. The state will stop receiving electricity from the Intermountain Power Plant in Central Utah, meaning our reliance on coal as a source of power will essentially be over.

My colleague, Sammy Roth reported on the historic breakthrough recently in The Times, detailing how the state has gradually been moving away from burning coal, which spews greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thereby warming the planet and exacerbating droughts, wildfires and other scourges.

As Sammy reported, the U.S. got nearly half its electricity from coal-fired plants as recently as 2007. By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 16.2%. California drove an even more dramatic shift, getting just 2.2% of its electricity from coal in 2024 — nearly all of it from the Intermountain plant.

 

[Tuur]

Now let's see it all work when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

 

[Desk trauma]

One of the most consequential moments in California’s drive to beat back climate change will take place next month. The state will stop receiving electricity from the Intermountain Power Plant in Central Utah, meaning our reliance on coal as a source of power will essentially be over.

Holy omission Batman! Yes they’re not going to get power from that coal burner in Delta anymore, but, the brand new natural gas/hydrogen turbine that’s replacing it was built specifically to send power to California.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Holy omission Batman! Yes they’re not going to get power from that coal burner in Delta anymore, but, the brand new natural gas/hydrogen turbine that’s replacing it was built specifically to send power to California.

'Tis true, California is not abandoning fossil fuels.

 

[eclipsenow]

Now let's see it all work when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

Intermittency is DECADES OLD news - and usually says more about the person raising it than being a valid concern with renewables. The engineers KNOW how to solve this through 3 rules - Overbuild Capacity, Overbuild across a wide area, and PHES storage.

OVERBUILD CAPACITY
This RADICALLY reduces storage on the grid by Overbuilding the amount of wind and solar in the first place. Don’t think of 100% supply - think 200%. They’re now cheap enough to do this. This is old news. Scientific American covered it way back in 2015 - 10 years ago. They showed that the “law of large numbers” means 15 GW of Texas wind - equivalent to 15 nuclear power plants - would only require 18 MW of storage! Renewable Energy Intermittency Explained: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities
Models for Australia's horribly rainy La Nina year of 2022 show that a 170% capacity would RADICALLY reduce storage. A near 100 per cent renewables grid is well within reach, and with little storage
Basically, if you are not getting MOST of your electricity LIVE from renewables - you have not built enough.

OVERBUILD ACROSS A WIDE AREA
Professor Andrew Blakers won the Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering. (Like a Nobel Prize for engineers.) He says that if each Australian state tried to do their own renewable grids it would increase the storage required by 5 TIMES! We need a national continent-wide super-grid. This is when the 'law of large numbers' kicks in. (See Scientific American article above.) Decades of weather data shows we can easily sail through the worst weather 1/5th the storage of each state going alone.

PHES STORAGE
We would only require 2 hours of batteries and 2 days worth of pumped hydro storage for each city - and if Sydney is having a bad week - Brisbane or Adelaide or even Perth can sell their hydro storage to us that week.
The Blakers world satellite map of ecologically safe OFF-river pumped hydro sites is 100 TIMES the more than we need. Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Atlases

THE COST OF ALL THIS?
Way back in 2017 his team calculated that an all renewable grid would be cheaper than today’s coal - and that’s not even factoring the staggering HEALTH costs of coal - just the electricity cost. If it was cheaper in 2017 wind and solar prices - imagine today?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544217309568
Fortunately, solar is doubling globally every 3 years. By 2030 it will produce more power than ALL other sources combined - including wind (and wind is doubling every 4.5 years!)

 

[Tuur]

OVERBUILD CAPACITY
This RADICALLY reduces storage on the grid by Overbuilding the amount of wind and solar in the first place.

Having seen what happens when adverse conditions affect available electricity over a wide area, good luck with that.

 

[eclipsenow]

Having seen what happens when adverse conditions affect available electricity over a wide area, good luck with that.

Grids will need significant upgrades.

Grids DO need significant upgrades anyway. Remember Texas and over 200 lives lost!?

I can't find it now - but Greentech Youtuber "Just have a think" covered an American plan for long underground HVDC connectors that would be a decent $$$ investment, but would quickly repay itself and prove cheaper in the long run due to reduced servicing. Let alone disasters like the Texas grid freezing over and shutting down.

This page may link to the same study - and does reference underground HVDC

Creating a National HVDC Transmission Network

The United States should continue to pursue its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50–52% from 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

fas.org

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Bah! Coal has our long term back. Let's see how well those alternative energy things work in 3 million years.

 

[eclipsenow]

Good point!

Coal will peak and run out​

Coal is finite and in 60 years to a century - depending on use and growth assumptions.
But way before then - maybe within this decade - coal annual production will peak due to geological supply constraints. Peak coal - Wikipedia
So it’s a good thing that solar capacity globally is doubling every 3 years - and by 2031 will be more than ALL other forms of energy combined.