Renewables were the single largest source of global energy-supply growth in 2025, outpacing coal, oil and gas for the first time this century outside a recession year, according to the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy, published in partnership with Ember. Global energy supply grew 1.7% and electricity demand 3.0%, both faster than the year before.
The 75-year-old report - previously produced by BP and now overseen by the Energy Institute with Ember, KPMG and Kearney - found renewables added 3.3 exajoules (EJ) of new supply in 2025, a 10% rise, with solar power responsible for 71% of that increase. Global solar generation grew 30% year-on-year and its share of total power generation reached 8.7%, overtaking wind's 8.4% and nearly matching nuclear's 8.8%, for the first time. Oil supply grew a slower 1.3% (2.5EJ) and gas 1.6% (2.4EJ).
“Even before this year's disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, the data from 2025 show the growing momentum of solar, batteries and other renewables, while electricity continues to grow in prominence in the energy system,” said Aditya Lolla, Ember's interim managing director. Battery capacity rose 66% over the year as more countries used storage to shift solar output round-the-clock.
It marks a genuine inflection point rather than a one-off year. Renewables have supplied 31% of the growth in total energy supply over the past decade, similar to gas's 34% share - but 2025 was the first year this century, excluding the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic, that renewables outgrew every fossil fuel individually. Fossil fuels nonetheless still supplied 86% of global energy in 2025, underlining how much of the system remains to be electrified.
Asia Pacific remained the fulcrum of the global picture. China alone accounted for more than a quarter of global energy supply and is electrifying faster than the US and Europe, the report found, with road fuel demand plateauing at levels six times below the US and three times below the EU on a per capita basis - part of the same shift that has made China the world's green energy champion. Pakistan's solar share of electricity has expanded from 3% to 22% in four years, prompting Islamabad to cancel LNG cargoes scheduled for 2026-27, while the European Union's wind and solar build-out since Russia's invasion of Ukraine has avoided an estimated €121bn ($131bn) in fossil-fuel imports, Ember calculated.
Correcting a viral emissions figure
The same report also became the source of a widely repeated but overstated claim about North America's role in 2025's emissions rise. Several energy-industry outlets, including OilPrice.com, reported that North America accounted for 47% of the global increase in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2025, with the US alone responsible for close to half.
The Statistical Review's own published figures put the true share lower. Global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel consumption rose 1.1% to 35.8 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2025 - an increase of roughly 394mn tonnes (Mt). North America's absolute increase was 152.3 Mt, or about 38% of that global rise, not 47%. The region's own emissions grew 2.7% year-on-year, the second-fastest regional rate after Africa's 2.8%, reversing a decade-long decline of 0.7% a year. The US itself, per the report's own wording, was responsible for “more than a third” of the global increase - not the roughly 50% some coverage implied.
The correction was flagged on X by the account @ShiningScience, which wrote: “According to the cited report, North America accounted for 38% of the global increase in energy-related CO2 emissions in 2025 (152 Mt of 394 Mt total), not 47%; the US for more than one third, not 50%.”
The underlying US story is real even at the corrected scale. A 13% jump in US coal-fired generation, as higher gas prices pushed some power plants back toward coal, combined with electricity demand growth of 3% and data centres accounting for 40% of global data-centre electricity consumption to push US emissions up 3.2% for the year - a reversal of the country's longer-run decline. US solar generation nonetheless grew more than 28% in 2025, and renewables supplied over 19% of US electricity.
Both figures - the accurate 38%/152 Mt and the inflated 47%/50% versions - describe the same underlying shift: a region that produces, consumes and exports large volumes of fossil fuels is finding it harder to cut emissions than regions further along in electrifying their economies, even as it adds renewable capacity of its own.
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