Solar Is “Leading the Energy Revolution,” Ember Analysis Shows

Fossil fuels are on their way out, while solar energy and other renewables are literally rising in power. Ember’s fifth annual Global Electricity Review offers a sunny outlook for renewable energy — and solar in particular — showing, for example, that renewables generated a record 30% of global electricity in 2023, up from 19% in 2000. Solar and wind are driving that increase, rising from 0.2% of global electricity in 2000 to a record 13.4% in 2023.

The study, released this May, offers insights from an analysis of electricity data from 215 countries, including 2023 data for 80 countries representing 92% of global electricity demand.

And authors Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, Nicolas Fulghum, and Dave Jones concluded that solar “is leading the energy revolution,” standing as the fastest-growing source of electricity generation for the 19th year in a row. Plus, solar has breezed past wind to become the largest source of new electricity for the second consecutive year — adding twice as much electricity in 2023 as coal did, for example. Solar generation grew 23% in 2023, compared to 10% for wind generation and 0.8% for fossil fuel generation.

All told, solar produced a record 5.5% of global electricity in 2023 — that’s 1,631 terawatt hours — and 33 countries got more than a tenth of their electricity from solar during that year. And the authors projected that a record surge of installations at the end of 2023 set up 2024 for an even bigger increase in solar generation. They noted that solar and wind isn’t just slowing emissions growth in the power sector — with power sector emissions in OECD countries falling 28% from their 2007 peak — but actually pushing fossil fuel generation into decline.

“The renewables future has arrived. Solar in particular is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible,” Jones, Ember’s Global Insights Programme Director, said in the report. “The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable. 2023 was likely the pivot point—peak emissions in the power sector — a major turning point in the history of energy.”

Plus, countries that position themselves at the front edge of the energy revolution have an “unprecedented opportunity,” Jones explained. “Expanding clean electricity not only helps to decarbonize the power sector. It also provides the step-up in supply needed to electrify the whole economy, and that’s the real game-changer for the climate.”

Ember offered even more good news this September. Even after record growth in 2023, the world is on track to install 29% more solar capacity in 2024, year over year, with 593 gigawatts of new solar installations, the think tank reported. Italy, the United States, India, Turkey, and Portugal’s solar installation growth has been even higher than the world average between January and July 2024, Ember adds, with Portugal showing a 2.29x year-over-year change.

Reporting on that September data, The Atlantic observed that inexpensive solar panels are changing the world — as an energy technology that’s faster to build and easier to build and adaptable at any scale. As The Atlantic noted, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects solar will surpass all other forms of energy by 2033. “This is unstoppable,” Heymi Bahar, senior energy analyst at IEA, told the magazine.

Kingsmill Bond, a senior energy strategist at the decarbonized-energy nonprofit RMI, pointed out to The Atlantic that solar is “providing as much new electricity as the entirety of global growth the year before” and that analysts “did not imagine in their wildest dreams that solar by the middle of the 2020s would already be supplying all of the growth of global electricity demand.”

Bond added, “The really interesting debate now is actually: When do we push fossil fuels off the plateau? And from our numbers, if solar keeps on growing this way, it’s going to be off the plateau by the end of this decade.”

‍The Economist illustrated solar power’s exponential growth in an essay this summer, explaining that installed solar capacity doubles about every three years and grows tenfold every decade. “The next tenfold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them,” the magazine declared.

Meanwhile, the cost of solar continues to drop. In a recent report, RMI touted that solar, already cheapest-ever form of electricity, will cost roughly half as much in 2030 as it does now, falling from $40/megawatt-hour to $20/megawatt-hour.  

“Exponential growth of clean energy is an unstoppable force that will put more spending power in the pockets of consumers,” Bond said in that report.

And speaking of putting more spending power in the pockets of consumers, Altus Power’s Community Solar program enables subscribers to support clean energy while reducing their monthly utility bill, all without the need for equipment installed at their homes. To learn more about Community Solar and to apply to the program, visit join.altuspower.com.