Low-emissions energy sources met all new global electricity demand for the first time in 2025, according to Ember. Solar power accounted for three-quarters of the 849 TWh of new demand, while wind power met almost all of the remainder.

Low-emissions sources generated 42.6 percent of the 31,779 TWh of electricity consumed globally in 2025, according to Ember. Global electricity demand grew by 2.8 percent during the year, in line with the average annual growth over the past decade.

"Clean power deployment is now at such a high level that it can structurally meet the increase in demand," said Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember. "In the next few years, we expect it to meet all the growth in electricity demand and start to push for a decline in fossil generation," he said.

Ember projects that by about 2035, fossil fuels' share of the electricity market will have dropped by 10 to 20 percent. The International Energy Agency has said that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, fossil-generated electricity would need to decline by 25 percent by 2030.

In 2025, China and India together reduced electricity generation from fossil fuels, the first time they have done so in the same year this century. Europe generated 71 percent of its electricity from low-emissions sources, after increasing its annual rollout of renewable energy by 5 percent in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Global oil and gas demand slowed compared with 2024 in both electricity generation and the overall energy mix.

Over the past decade, wind and solar generation accounted for 81 percent of total wind and solar growth since 2000, while fossil fuels accounted for 27 percent of their generation growth since 2000. Average emissions per kilowatt hour generated globally fell to 458 grams of CO2 equivalent in 2025, down from 543 grams of CO2 equivalent in 2015. Global CO2 emissions reached 38.4 billion tonnes in 2025, a figure that would have been 4 billion tonnes higher without growth in solar and wind power.

Rahmat Poudineh, head of electricity research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, questioned whether the milestone marked a durable shift. "In an average year, if clean resources are sufficient to meet extra demand for electricity, that doesn't establish that this is going to be a permanent state," he said. "If you want to establish a trend, it needs to prove in extreme conditions, in cold winters, hot summers, because the system is designed to meet peak demand, not average demand," Poudineh said. He added: "Since the 1970s, these fossil fuel shocks played a major role in changing the direction of energy policy, and this one has a high possibility [of doing the same], but we still don't know 100 percent."

Yannis Bassias, consultant at Amphore Energy, pointed to continuing reliance on gas-fired generation. "Renewables can meet new demand, but they cannot yet guarantee stability without flexible capacity, storage and stronger grids," he said. "The Gulf crisis reveals that high prices do not eliminate the technical need for gas in power systems," Bassias said. "The dependence remains structural in Europe, Japan and Korea, where imported LNG is essential for system stability," he said.