Renewables supplied 31.7% of global electricity in 2024 and reached 49.5% of installed power capacity by the end of 2025, according to figures released by the International Renewable Energy Agency on July 14. The energy transition has therefore reached the point where clean generation is no longer marginal, while the grid capable of using all of it remains, in accordance with long-standing policy, two weeks from completion.

The Capacity Arrived

IRENA said renewable electricity generation grew 9.8% in 2024, compared with 1.4% growth for nonrenewable generation. Renewables generated 9,836 terawatt-hours worldwide: 4,589 TWh in Asia, 1,758 TWh in Europe and 1,535 TWh in North America.

Revised IRENA data show that the world installed a record 693 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2025. Total renewable capacity reached 5.2 terawatts, and renewables accounted for 85.7% of all capacity additions that year.

These are not projections. The panels, turbines and hydroelectric plants exist. The remaining work is the less photogenic business of transmission, storage, balancing, pricing and persuading a planning office that an interconnection queue is not a generation technology.

Europe Discovers Daylight

Solar produced a record 52 TWh in the European Union in June, or 25% of the bloc’s electricity, according to an Ember analysis published July 14. That put solar ahead of nuclear at 21%, gas at 15%, wind at 14%, hydro at 12% and coal at 8%.

Spain obtained 34% of its June electricity from solar, Germany 36% and Poland 24%. Eighteen EU member states had set new monthly solar-share records during 2026 by the time Ember published its analysis.

A quarter of EU electricity came from a source that stops generating every evening, which is not an argument against solar so much as an unusually direct request for batteries, flexible demand and functioning cross-border grids. Europe responded on July 20 by reviving discussion of a Portugal-Morocco interconnector. Iberia currently connects only 3% of its electricity capacity to neighboring European countries, compared with the EU’s 15% target for 2030.

China Builds The Battery, Then Checks The Instructions

China held more than half of global battery-energy-storage capacity at the end of 2025 and had nearly 150 GW of lithium-ion storage by the first quarter of 2026, according to Ember. China raised its 2030 target for “new energy storage” to 300 GW in June.

Scale is no longer the immediate problem. Utilization is. Ember found that renewable projects with co-located batteries still cycled about 100 fewer times per year than standalone storage facilities. Its modeled estimate suggests the 2025 utility-scale battery fleet could have shifted 23 TWh more renewable electricity if operated at 350 cycles per year. That figure is a counterfactual, not electricity that was actually delivered.

The global transition has thus entered its mature phase: capacity records arrive monthly, storage records quarterly and institutional coordination on the traditional two-week schedule. Nothing is happening except an entire power system changing faster than its paperwork.

Sources

  • IRENA, “Renewable Power Generation Records Its Fastest Growth Ever” (July 14, 2026): https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2026/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Records-Its-Fastest-Growth-Ever
  • Ember, “A quarter of EU power came from solar for the first time in June” (July 14, 2026): https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/a-quarter-of-eu-power-came-from-solar-for-the-first-time-in-june
  • Ember, “From scale to system: navigating the next phase of China’s battery storage” (July 16, 2026): https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/from-scale-to-system-navigating-the-next-phase-of-chinas-battery-storage
  • Reuters, “Portugal, Morocco push for EU funds, private investors for power link” (July 20, 2026): https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/portugal-morocco-push-eu-funds-private-investors-power-link-2026-07-20/