🌅 Renewables’ Share of the Global Energy Mix

SOURCE

Ember

WHAT TO KNOW

• Low-carbon energy sources represented 40.9% of the world’s total electricity generated in 2024, surpassing the 40% mark for the first time since the 1940s. Renewable sources were the main driver of growth among low-carbon generation, providing 49% more electricity in 2024 than the previous high measured in 2022.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Solar power was the world’s fastest-growing power source (up 29%) for the 20th year in a row, doubling output in just three years. Still, solar remains a relatively small part of the global energy mix, supplying around 7% of the world’s total electricity last year, just behind wind (8%) and far behind the world’s single largest renewable source, hydro power (14%).

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Hydroelectricity is one of the world’s oldest forms of renewable energy technology, representing a robust share of the global energy mix going back to the 1940s, when the world’s power system was around 50 times smaller than it is today. While energy developers in the U.S. have focused on solar and wind in recent decades, China has fueled its economic expansion by building thousands of new—often massive—hydroelectric dams.