Wind and solar surpass fossil fuels in EU electricity generation for first time

Wind turbines and solar panels produced more electricity than coal and gas across the European Union in 2025, a threshold crossed for the first time since the bloc began tracking power-sector data. The milestone arrived in an Ember report published the day after Donald Trump used his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to describe wind turbines as "those damn things" and the European Green Deal as a "Green New Scam".

EU crosses the fossil-fuel threshold

The Ember analysis shows that wind and solar together overtook fossil generation across the 27 member states last year. Solar led the advance, with capacity additions accelerating across Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. The same report calculates that renewable deployment between 2019 and 2024 has already cut coal and gas import costs by $70 billion, a figure that underscures the budgetary case for the transition quite apart from climate arguments. Much of the displaced gas would have come from the United States, now the world's largest oil and gas producer, whose administration has openly pressed the EU to buy more American fuel.

Nic Fulghum, the Ember analyst who authored the study, said the speed of solar deployment in particular "is bringing renewables to record levels" in all major economies. His preliminary numbers, based on data through November with a final tally due in April, put global renewable capacity growth at 11 per cent for 2025. That follows a 22 per cent jump in 2023 and a 66 per cent surge in 2022. Wind and solar now supply 18 per cent of world electricity, up two percentage points in a single year.

Global capacity keeps accelerating

The International Energy Agency confirmed in its 2025 annual review that total renewable generation, solar, wind and hydro, broke records for the 23rd consecutive year. The agency noted that 80 per cent of global electricity consumption occurs in regions with high-quality solar radiation, a geographic fact that makes photovoltaic expansion the default economic choice for most governments. Even Saudi Arabia, long synonymous with oil, is rolling out utility-scale solar to free crude for export rather than burning it in domestic power plants.

Rafael Salas, professor of economic analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid, argues the trajectory is now structurally locked in. "There is nothing that can be done against technological improvements," he said. Cost curves for solar modules and wind turbines have fallen far below the operating costs of existing coal and gas plants in most markets, meaning new fossil capacity struggles to find financing even where policy is permissive.

China dominates manufacturing and deployment

China's role is double-edged. Trump accused Beijing at Davos of exporting wind turbines while refusing to install them at home. The data contradict him: China hosts almost half of global wind capacity and accounted for two-thirds of all new solar panels and wind turbines installed worldwide in 2025, according to the IEA. The same dominance extends to electric vehicles, where Chinese brands lead domestic sales and are gaining market share in Europe as US manufacturers retreat.

That manufacturing concentration worries Western policymakers. The journal Science, in a special issue naming the global renewable push the most important scientific advance of 2025, warned that the United States is failing to capture the commercial value of technologies it originally pioneered. China now supplies 80 per cent of the world's solar panels, 70 per cent of wind turbines and 70 per cent of lithium batteries. The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act and the EU's Net Zero Industry Act are explicit attempts to reshore parts of those supply chains, but the gap remains wide.

Energy security concerns reinforce the shift

Fulghum points to a second driver beyond economics: energy security. Since the 2022 gas crisis, European capitals have treated dependence on imported fossil fuels as a strategic vulnerability. Trump's return to the White House has amplified that anxiety. "There is concern about dependence on energy exports from US sources, such as liquefied natural gas," Fulghum explained. "Deploying renewables is the fastest way to avoid costly attachment to volatile global fossil markets." The logic applies equally in Japan, South Korea and Brazil, all of which accelerated renewable auctions in 2025.

United States moves against the trend

The US federal government continues to bet on fossil expansion, most visibly in its recent licensing decisions around Venezuelan oil. Fulghum warns that global oil demand is "destined to stall out and fall in the next decade" and that increasing production will only "further undermine the economic case for oil producers in a market on the verge of decline." Transport and heating are shifting to electric vehicles and heat pumps at a pace that surprised even optimistic forecasters two years ago.

Yet 2025 brought a counter-intuitive spike in US coal generation, up 13 per cent year on year. Fulghum attributes most of the increase to a short-term switch from gas to coal driven by higher Henry Hub prices, not a structural revival. Solar still covered the largest share of new US electricity demand last year, growing faster than all fossil sources combined. Data centres, often cited as a driver of new gas demand, have so far been met largely by renewable procurement contracts from tech companies with their own decarbonisation targets.

Coal retreats in Asia but rebounds in America

The most striking development in the global coal picture came from the world's two most populous countries. Carbon Brief analysis shows coal-fired generation fell 3 per cent in India and 1.6 per cent in China during 2025, the first annual declines in half a century for both. In each case, record renewable installations displaced coal during peak daylight hours, while hydro recovery in China reduced the need for thermal backup. The trend suggests the much-discussed "peak coal" moment may have arrived in Asia several years ahead of most scenario models.

The next inflection points

Three deadlines will shape the next phase. The EU's 2030 renewable target, recently raised to 42.5 per cent, requires average annual capacity additions roughly double the 2025 rate. China's 14th five-year plan ends this year, and the 15th plan due in early 2026 will signal whether Beijing intends to maintain, accelerate or moderate its clean-energy industrial push. In the United States, the 2026 mid-term elections will determine whether the Inflation Reduction Act's tax credits survive intact, a question that already influences boardroom investment decisions across the Atlantic.