Ember has said<\/a>.<\/p>\nRecent research suggested that this is still an underused pathway to energy autonomy, and that rooftop solar panels can cover 40 percent of EU needs.<\/p>\n
Solar and wind energy have been growing at record annual rates for 23 years according to the International Energy Agency, the world\u2019s leading energy think tank, claiming an ever-growing share of the electricity market. Because the electricity market was growing as a whole, there was room for coal and gas use to grow as well. That has now changed, said Ember.<\/p>\n
Last October, it was assessed that in 2025, solar and wind power outgrew the electricity market for the first time, and began to take market share away from fossil fuels worldwide.<\/p>\n
This global transition away from fossil fuels manifested itself as a large, simultaneous drop in coal use in China and India last year, two of the world\u2019s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n
In China, coal-fired power fell by 1 percent, the first drop in a decade.<\/p>\n
\u2018So much capacity being added\u2019<\/p>\n
Ember said solar power has grown in 14 of the EU\u2019s 27 member states, but some industry insiders warned that too much ambition could backfire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Greece, in 2025, we reached an installed capacity [of solar photovoltaics] of 12GW, up from 9.5GW in 2024, a 25 percent leap,\u201d said Stelios Loumakis, president of the Association of Photovoltaic Energy Producers in Greece. \u201cAs a result, a quarter of the power we generated was cut out by the grid,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, because supply exceeded demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect that to rise to 40 percent this year. So what we\u2019re doing is furiously adding capacity while producers lose income,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is now so much capacity being added that a lot of these investors are going to go bankrupt,\u201d Loumakis told Al Jazeera. \u201cThe only way to avoid that is to install a lot of electricity storage, but what is currently under construction is still much too little.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was also bad news in the United States, where emissions rose by 2.4 percent last year after two years of declines, due to a rise in coal-fired generation, Axios reported, citing research by the Rhodium Group.<\/p>\n
The administration of US President Donald Trump has pledged not to shut down any coal-fired electricity plants, and has been cancelling licences for offshore wind and onshore solar parks. The US also plans to pull back $24bn in federal subsidies to climate projects awarded by the previous Biden administration.<\/p>\n
In March, Ember said the US \u201cremains far behind the European Union\u201d, as wind and solar power generated 17 percent of its electricity in 2024.<\/p>\n
Some of Trump\u2019s reversals are being struck down in the courts.<\/p>\n
Federal judges ordered the resumption of construction of large wind parks offshore New York and Virginia this month, and more Trump administration injunctions were being fought in the courts.<\/p>\n
Legislation and litigation are key tools in making the clean energy transition irreversible, recent research has shown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Solar and wind power provided more electricity than coal and gas last year, leading a global trend, said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[18,7520,440,1015,19,17,5,961,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-299323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-energy","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-renewable-energy","16":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115944059287045807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}