Ember: 40% of Global Electricity Was From Renewables in 2024
Global clean power generation has reached a significant milestone, exceeding 40% of worldwide electricity production.
This breakthrough, detailed in Ember's sixth annual Global Electricity Review, marks a pivotal moment in the global energy transition.
The comprehensive report, analysing electricity data from 215 countries representing 93% of global demand, shows that low-carbon power sources reached 40.9% of the global electricity mix in 2024, up from 39.4% in 2023.
Renewable energy sources delivered a record-breaking performance, adding 858 TWh of generation in 2024 – 49% higher than the previous record set in 2022.
Solar's exponential rise
Solar power has emerged as the undisputed engine of the global energy transition, maintaining its position as the fastest-growing electricity source for the 20th consecutive year.
Solar generation has doubled in just three years, exceeding 2,000 TWh and contributing the largest share of new electricity globally for the third year running, with a 29% growth rate.
China dominated solar expansion, accounting for 53% of the global increase in solar generation last year.
Global solar capacity reached a remarkable milestone in 2024, hitting 2 TW just two years after reaching its first terawatt – demonstrating the accelerating pace of deployment.
Climate challenges drive demand surge
Despite clean energy's impressive growth, extreme weather conditions presented significant challenges to the global power sector in 2024.
Heatwaves around major population centres drove cooling demand substantially higher than in 2023, adding 0.7% (208 TWh) to global electricity consumption.
This weather-driven demand spike resulted in overall electricity growth of 4.0%, significantly higher than 2023's 2.6% increase.
The surge in demand led to a 1.4% rise in fossil fuel generation, pushing global power sector emissions up by 1.6% to a record 14.6 billion tonnes of CO2.
Future outlook
The global power system faces two dominant trends through the remainder of the decade: solar's rapidly expanding share in the electricity mix and robust demand growth as electrification replaces fossil fuels across the economy.
New electricity demand drivers – including electric vehicles, heat pumps and data centres – are already contributing 0.7% to annual demand growth, more than twice their impact from five years ago.
"Despite this, it remains clear that clean generation growth and the uptake of flexible technologies such as battery storage will reduce reliance on fossil fuel power in the coming years, even in a world of faster demand growth," notes the report.
Ember's analysis suggests that even with electricity demand growing at 4.1% annually until 2030 – exceeding current projections – clean generation expansion will likely keep pace.
China and India's energy transitions will play decisive roles in the global picture, as both nations increasingly power their growing demand with clean electricity sources.
"As we reach a tipping point where the increasingly rapid rise of clean generation outpaces structural growth in demand, changes to fossil fuel generation over the short-term will be dominated by fluctuations in weather," the report concludes.
The full dataset behind the report has been made freely available to support further analysis and accelerate the transition to clean electricity.
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