Surprising trends in global electricity generation

Global electricity generation in 2025 was dominated by an outsized surge in solar that reshaped the year’s story: Ember’s analyst Nick Fuljum told host Shayle Kann that solar generation rose by 636 TWh in 2025 (about a 30% YoY gain), producing roughly three‑quarters of the world’s net electricity growth (total net growth ≈849 TWh). Wind contributed just over 200 TWh of the increase, while hydropower was flat and nuclear saw only modest gains. Both speakers stressed that solar’s performance is not just headline capacity additions but sustained generation growth — solar now at ~2,700 TWh globally — and remains on a multi‑year exponential trajectory (10‑year average growth ≈27%). Shayle and Nick agreed that 2026 might be the year relative growth slows, but the immediate data show solar still accelerating in absolute and relative terms.

The conversation then unpicked geography and integration issues. Nick explained how China’s buildout has produced a paradox: continued coal capacity additions but flat coal generation and falling coal capacity factors as coal shifts to shoulder/peaking roles to accommodate midday solar — a structural change driven by policy and dispatch reforms and significant curtailment that likely understates solar’s future usable generation. India, by contrast, looks unlike a simple replay of China: lower electricity intensity (less than half the electricity per GDP unit), much higher renewables per capita than China had at the same stage, and a plausible earlier peak in coal generation (potentially by 2030–2035). On storage, batteries scaled quickly — ~250 GWh added in 2025 (a 46% increase) — but deployment is uneven: globally batteries can shift ~14% of new solar daily output, while markets like Chile and Australia exceed a 50% shift benchmark that would remove midday curtailment; the EU is at ~9%, China ~18%, U.S. ~20%. Nick and Shayle highlighted non‑linear, market‑by‑market battery growth driven by revenue models and weather‑dependent merchant returns. Finally, they noted nuclear growth is concentrated in China but will not outpace wind/solar, and global gas generation rose only modestly (30–40 TWh) with the U.S. as the main outlier due to cheap domestic gas. Overall, the episode framed electricity — especially solar + storage — as the defining, fast‑moving axis of the coming energy transition.