Clean energy accounted for nearly 41% of the world’s electricity in 2024.
Ember released a report on Tuesday that found 40.9% of global electricity generation last year came from clean energy.
Last year marked the “first time since the 1940s” that clean energy’s share of global power generation crossed the 40% threshold, according to the energy think tank.
Among green energy sources, hydro was responsible for 14.3% of global electricity. Behind that was nuclear at 9%, while wind and solar produced 8.1% and 6.9%, respectively, the report said. Other renewable energy like bioenergy, geothermal and tidal accounted for less than 3%.
Overall, clean energy was responsible for 12,609 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity generation in 2024, marking an increase of 9.6% year-over-year, the report found.
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Renewable energy specifically grew 9.6% to 9,842 TWh last year, with solar standing out as the “largest contributor” of that for the third back-to-back year, Ember said.
Solar “added more than twice as much electricity generation in 2024 as any other electricity source” and is “more than 20 times larger than it was” a dozen years ago, per the think tank.
“Solar power has become the engine of the global energy transition. Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force. As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world’s ever-increasing demand for electricity,” Ember Managing Director Phil MacDonald said in a statement.
In 2024, demand for electricity came in at 30,856 TWh globally, posting a 4% jump year-over-year, according to Ember.
Hot weather conditions played a role in the increase in global electricity demand last year. Artificial intelligence, data centers, electric vehicles and heat pumps did so as well, with the think tank saying they were responsible for 0.7% of last year’s uptick in demand.
Over three-quarters of the world’s jump in demand in 2024 was met by clean energy, according to Ember.
Higher cooling demand from heatwaves contributed to electricity generated from fossil fuels experiencing an uptick of 1.4% last year, the think tank noted.
Roughly 18,247 TWh of the world’s electricity in 2024 came from fossil fuels. That, according to Ember, represented 59.1% of the world’s electricity generation.
“Without the impact of hotter temperatures, fossil generation would have remained flat,” Ember said in its report.
The think tank said it looked at the “latest 2024 data for 88 countries representing 93% of global electricity demand, as well as estimates for 2024 for all other countries” to craft the report.
In the U.S., clean energy provided 42% of its electricity in 2024, while fossil fuels accounted for 58%, according to the report.
About 42.5% of power generation in America last year was gas. U.S. coal energy generation came in at 14.9%, marking the first instance of it ever being under 15%, Ember said.
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The report also found 17% of U.S. electricity was generated specifically by wind and solar last year. When it came to solar, it notched a 64 TWh jump, the “largest-ever increase in solar generation” in the country, according to the think tank.
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