Wind and solar are growing faster than any other sources of electricity in history, according to new analysis from thinktank Ember.
It says they are now growing fast enough to exceed rising demand, meaning there will be a peak in fossil fuel electricity generation – and emissions – from this year.
As a result, Ember says in its latest annual review of global electricity data that a “new era of falling fossil fuel generation is imminent”.
Renewables met a record 30% of global electricity demand in 2023 and emissions from the sector would already have peaked if not for a record fall in hydropower, the analysis says.
The rise of wind and solar has been stemming the growth of fossil fuel power, which would have been 22% higher in 2023 without them, Ember says. This would have added around 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) to annual global emissions.
Nevertheless, the growth of clean electricity sources needs to accelerate to meet the global goal of tripling renewables by 2030, Ember says.
Meeting this goal would almost halve power sector emissions by the end of the decade, and put the world on a pathway aligned with the 1.5C climate target set in the Paris Agreement.
Clean capacity expansion
In 2023, more than twice as much new electricity generation from solar was added around the world as from coal, Ember says.
The share of solar within the global energy mix reached 5.5%, up from 4.6% in 2022, according to Ember. The share of wind stayed steady at 7.8% (2,304 terawatt hours, TWh).
No other sources of electricity generation have ever grown from 100TWh per year to 1,000TWh faster than solar and wind, Ember says. These took just eight and 12 years respectively, as shown in the figure below.
This sits far ahead of gas generation at 28 years, coal at 32 years and hydropower at 39 years. (Nuclear also grew from 100TWh to 1,000TWh over 12 years, the Ember figure shows, but tailed off more quickly than wind).
In response to Ember’s report, Dr Hannah Ritchie, deputy editor at Our World in Data, says in a statement:
“The main headline from Ember’s 2023 review is that the world sees a bright future for solar power. It is consistently breaking records and maintains its position as the fastest-growing power source in history. This is not only driven by the need to move to clean energy, but by its exciting economics as prices continue to fall. There are early signs that a peak in power sector emissions is imminent. Faster growth in low-carbon energy will be needed to drive down emissions quickly, especially as countries electrify transport, heating and industry.”
Despite solar and wind capacity growth in 2023, generation grew more slowly than expected, rising by 513TWh – a small drop from the 517TWh added in 2022.
Solar generation growth lagged behind record high capacity addition growth of 36%, due to lower sunlight levels in 2023, especially in China, as well as underreporting of solar generation in some countries. This is expected to be temporary, notes Ember.
For wind, there was a fall in generation for the first time since 2001, down 9.1TWh or 2.1%. Low wind conditions kept load factors close to their lowest level in five years, Ember says.
Additionally, higher costs slowed wind capacity additions as developers were forced to delay or cancel projects. More than $30bn in investment was put on hold as at least 10 offshore wind projects in the US and Europe were hit by delays, the Wall Street Journal reported for example.
In other renewables, hydropower’s share of the electricity mix fell by 0.6 percentage points to 14.3% of the world’s electricity mix, Ember reports. It therefore remains the world’s largest source of clean power, but its share of the mix is now at the lowest since at least 2000, with wind and solar combined sitting just 1 percentage point behind at 13.4% (3,935TWh) .
This is despite 7GW of new hydropower capacity coming online in 2023, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Ember had previously estimated that there would be a 0.4% reduction in global power sector emissions in 2023, but the fall in hydropower generation prevented this. Instead, emissions from the power sector rose by 1%, as the hydro shortfall was mostly met by coal.
Wind and solar have expanded from 0.2% of the global electricity mix in 2000 to 13.4% in 2023. Over the last year, their share grew by another 1.5 percentage points, up from 11.9% in 2022.
Demand rises to a record high
While wind and solar were rising fast, 2023 also saw global electricity demand reaching a record high, with an increase in demand of 627TWh, Ember reports. This is the equivalent of adding the entire demand of Canada (607TWh), for example.
With wind and solar having grown by 513TWh in 2023 and nuclear by 46TWh, but hydro falling 88TWh, the remaining demand growth was met by increased fossil fuel use.
This continued the trend of recent years where the gap between clean power growth and rapidly-rising demand was met by expanded electricity generation from fossil fuels.
Moreover, last year’s increase in demand was below the recent average, rising by 2.2%. This was due to a pronounced decrease in demand from OECD countries, including the US (-1.4%) and the European Union (-3.4%).
Elsewhere, there was rapid growth in electricity demand in China, growing nearly 7%. This was the equivalent of the total global demand growth in 2023, Ember notes.
Looking ahead, demand is likely to grow even faster as energy use is increasingly electrified. Already more than half of global electricity demand growth in 2023 was driven by the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), heat pumps, electrolysers, air conditioning and data centres, the report states.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), nearly 14m EVs were registered globally in 2023, bringing the total number on the roads to 40m. This puts electric car sales last year at 3.5m higher than in 2022, a 35% year-on-year increase.
Ember forecasts that electricity demand will accelerate significantly going forwards, with a growth of 968TWh expected in 2024. Even faster growth would be expected on a path to staying below 1.5C under the IEA’s “NZE” scenario, it notes.
Yet clean electricity generation is expected to grow faster still, with wind,solar and other clean energy sources adding an estimated 1,300TWh in 2024, as shown in the chart below.
This would be more than double the increase in 2023 (493TWh), due to an expected uplift in the US from the Inflation Reduction Act and a reversal in short-term factors such as last year’s hydro drought, the report says.
As a result of this, Ember estimates that fossil generation will decline by 333TWh or 2% in 2024. Even more importantly, Ember says clean energy growth makes ongoing falls in power sector fossil fuel use “inevitable” – meaning a steady decline in related emissions.
Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and founding partner of Global Optimism, says in a press statement:
“The fossil fuel era has reached its necessary and inevitable expiration date as these findings show so clearly. This is a critical turning point: Last century’s outdated technologies can no longer compete with the exponential innovations and declining cost curves in renewable energy and storage. All of humanity and the planet upon which we depend will be better off for it.”
Tripling renewables and what comes next
At the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai in 2023, all countries agreed to contribute to the tripling of global renewable energy capacity by 2030, in what was seen as a “crucial” step for 1.5C.
Although the COP28 outcome did not include numerical targets, Ember says tripling renewables would mean adding 14,000TWh of annual renewable generation by 2030, compared to 2022 levels. In 2022, renewables accounted for 8,599TWh of the 28,844TWh of electricity generated globally.
After accounting for rising electricity demand, it says this tripling would help cut fossil fuel generation by 6,570TWh, or 37%. With highly-polluting coal power bearing the brunt of this reduction, power sector emissions would fall even faster, by 45% in 2030, it says.
Already, the expansion of renewable energy has slowed fossil fuel growth substantially, as the graph below shows.
After recording average annual growth of 3.5% over the decade 2004-2013, fossil fuel generation only grew by an average of 1.3% in the decade to 2023.
Fossil fuel generation was 22% lower in 2023 than it would have been without solar and wind generation. Between 2015 and 2023, wind and solar have together avoided more than 4GtCO2 emissions, Ember notes.
Meeting the tripling goal would mean some 60% of global electricity supplies coming from renewable sources by 2030.
This would mark a dramatic shift from current renewable shares. In 2023, 102 countries had a renewable generation share of 30% or higher, up from 98 in 2022. Yet only 69 countries in 2023 had a share in excess of 50%.
Hitting the tripling target would help put “the world on a pathway aligned with the 1.5C climate goal”, says Ember.
Ember’s director of global insights, Dave Jones says in a statement:
“We already know the key enablers that help countries unleash the full potential of solar and wind. There’s an unprecedented opportunity for countries that choose to be at the forefront of the clean energy future.”
The post Wind and solar are ‘fastest-growing electricity sources in history’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Wind and solar are ‘fastest-growing electricity sources in history’
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has asked his government to draft by February guidelines for a national roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, an idea he championed during COP30.
In a directive issued on Monday, the Brazilian leader requested the ministries of finance, energy and environment, together with the chief of staff’s office, to come up with a proposal for a roadmap to a “just and planned energy transition” that would lead to the “gradual reduction of the country’s dependence on fossil fuels”.
The order also calls for the creation of financial mechanisms to support a roadmap, including an “Energy Transition Fund” that would be financed with government revenues from oil and gas exploration.
The guidelines, due in 60 days, will be delivered “as a priority” to Brazil’s National Energy Policy Council, which will use them to craft an official fossil fuel transition roadmap.
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At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, President Lula and Environment Minister Marina Silva called on countries to agree a process leading to an international roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels, after Silva argued earlier in June that “the worst possible thing would be for us to not plan for this transition”.
Yet, to the disappointment of more than 80 countries, the proposal for a global roadmap did not make it into the final Belém agreement as other nations that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel production resisted the idea. Draft compromise language that would have offered countries support to produce national roadmaps was axed.
Brazil seeks to set an example
Instead, Brazil’s COP30 president said he would work with governments and industry on a voluntary initiative to produce such a roadmap by next year’s UN climate summit, while a group of some 25 countries backed a conference to discuss a just transition away from coal, oil and gas that will be hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands in April 2026.
Experts at Observatório do Clima, a network of 130 Brazilian climate NGOs, welcomed Lula’s subsequent order for a national roadmap and said in a statement it sends signals abroad that Brazil is “doing its homework”.
“President Lula seems to be taking the roadmap proposal seriously,” said Cláudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at Observatório do Clima. “If Brazil – a developing country and the world’s eighth-largest oil producer – demonstrates that it is willing to practice what it preaches, it becomes harder for other countries to allege difficulties.”
The Amazon rainforest emerges as the new global oil frontier
Brazil is one of a number of countries planning a major expansion of oil and gas extraction in the coming decade, according to the Production Gap report put together by think-tanks and NGOs. Much of the exploration is set to take place offshore near the Amazon basin, which is poised to become a new frontier for fossil fuel development.
Significant funding needed
Natalie Unterstell, president of the Brazilian climate nonprofit Talanoa Institute and a member of Lula’s Council for Sustainable Social Economic Development, welcomed the national roadmap proposal in a post on LinkedIn, but emphasised it must tackle Brazil’s goal of becoming the world’s fourth largest oil producer by 2030.
Another key question is whether the Energy Transition Fund it envisages will be large enough to catalyse a real shift over to clean energy, she added. “Small and fragmented tools won’t move the dial,” she wrote.
Some Brazilian states have tested a model similar to the proposal for a national Energy Transition Fund. In the oil-producing state of Espirito Santo, for example, a percentage of the state government’s oil revenues go to a sovereign fund that invests in renewable energy, energy efficiency projects and substitution of fossil fuels with less polluting alternatives.
Colombia seeks to speed up a “just” fossil fuel phase-out with first global conference
Andreas Sieber, associate director for policy at campaign group 350.org, said a meaningful roadmap for Brazil would need to secure “adequate, fair and transparent financing to make the transition real on the ground”.
He also called for “a truly participatory process – involving scientists, civil society, workers whose livelihoods are at stake, and frontline and traditional communities whose rights must be upheld – while ensuring that those with vested fossil fuel interests do not shape the outcome”.
The post Brazil’s Lula requests national roadmap for fossil fuel transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
Brazil’s Lula requests national roadmap for fossil fuel transition
In a letter to Congress, the groups said data center development raises concerns about rising energy costs, water use and climate impacts. Many communities are fighting back.
More than 200 environmental organizations signed a letter to Congress supporting a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The letter, sent Monday, highlights these centers’ impacts on water resources, electricity rates and greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental Groups Demand a Nationwide Freeze on Data Center Construction
Climate change is often discussed in global terms, such as the melting of ice caps, rising oceans, and the spread of wildfires. However, the truth is that it begins at home. Every single-family household, whether in the bustle of Toronto, the suburbs of Vancouver, a farming community on the Prairies, or a small northern town, is an active participant in shaping the climate future. The actions we take or fail to take are not isolated. They accumulate, reverberate, and shape the quality of life our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will inherit.
The Myth of Insignificance
Many households believe their contribution is too small to matter. “What difference does it make if I leave the lights on, drive everywhere, or throw food scraps in the garbage? I’m just one family.” But this myth of insignificance is one of the greatest dangers of our time. Each discarded plastic bottle, each unnecessary car trip, each bag of wasted food does not disappear. It piles up, becoming part of the global crisis of climate change. What feels like a private choice is, in reality, a public consequence.
Inaction as a Legacy
Imagine a Canadian family that chooses not to recycle, not to conserve, not to shift their habits. For a year, the consequences may feel invisible. But roll the clock forward. By 2050, their grandchildren in Toronto will wake up to summers filled with weeks-long heat advisories. Schoolyards and parks sit empty in July because it is too dangerous for children to play outdoors. Ontario’s hydro grid is stretched thin due to millions of air conditioners running simultaneously, leading to rolling blackouts. Food prices have doubled as droughts in the Prairies devastate crops, and supply chains falter. Sound familiar? Its already happening across Canada!
Meanwhile, their cousins in Prince Edward Island are coping with rising seas. Entire communities along the coast are gone, washed away by storm surges that happen with increasing frequency. Families that lived by the water for generations have been forced inland, their ancestral homes now threatened by sea rise. This is not exaggeration, climate science paints a stark and very real picture of future coastal realities.
By 2075, their great-grandchildren in northern communities will live with constant water restrictions, as the thawing of permafrost has altered rivers and lakes. Traditional hunting grounds are unsafe because the ice forms too late and melts too soon. Invasive pests and fire scar forests that once provided medicine and food. The Earth around them bears the weight of countless small inactions compounded across time. And when they look back, they see a generation that knew better but refused to change.
Action as a Legacy
Now imagine another Canadian family. They compost, recycle, conserve, and teach their children that every small act of stewardship makes a difference. For a year, the impact may seem modest. But roll the clock forward.
By 2050, their grandchildren in Winnipeg will be growing vegetables in backyard and community gardens, nourished by decades of composting. Energy bills are lower because their homes are equipped with rooftop solar panels and properly insulated to conserve heat in winter and cool in summer. Children still play outside freely because air quality warnings are rare.
Out east, their relatives in Halifax have adapted coastal homes to utilize renewable energy micro-grids and employ storm-resilient design. They continue to live by the ocean, harvesting from healthier waters thanks to decades of careful stewardship and waste reduction. By 2075, their great-grandchildren in northern Ontario communities thrive in local economies powered by clean energy.
Rivers run clearer because they are not treated as dumping grounds. Indigenous and non-Indigenous households work together in climate-adaptive food systems, including greenhouses, hydroponics, and land-based harvesting, to ensure food security without overburdening ecosystems. This family’s small actions, multiplied over decades, became part of a collective movement toward renewal.
The Full Cycle of Consequence
Every household action has a cycle. Throwing out food waste creates methane gas, which accelerates global warming, intensifying storms that flood homes, including those in Montreal, Calgary, and Fredericton. Driving when public transit is available contributes to emissions, which in turn lead to hotter summers in Ottawa, resulting in higher cooling costs, increased strain on the grid, and potentially blackouts during heatwaves. Buying fast fashion creates textile waste that ends up in Canadian landfills, similar to those outside Vancouver or Edmonton, polluting soils and waterways long after today’s wearers are gone.
The cycle is relentless, and it all begins with decisions made in the privacy of the household. What we must recognize is that there is no neutral choice. Every action either adds to the problem or contributes to the solution.
Looking Generations Ahead
The question is not whether a single-family household can “solve” climate change. It cannot. The question is: will this household’s actions add to the burden or lighten it? Will future children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren wake each morning in a Canada that is habitable and thriving, or one that is hostile and diminished?
To answer this question, every family must reflect on what kind of ancestors they want to be remembered as. Because, in truth, the climate crisis is not just about us; it is about them.
Blog by Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Image Credit :Olivie Strauss, Unsplash
The post The Household Choice: Climate Change and the Weight of Everyday Decisions appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
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