Solar and wind power provided more electricity than coal and gas last year, leading the global trend, think tank Ember said.
Solar and wind power outperformed fossil fuels for the first time in the European Union last year, a new high watermark on Europe’s green and autonomous energy transition.
The two sources of EU electricity generation accounted for 30 percent of energy, compared with 29 percent for coal and gas, global energy think tank Amber said in its European Electricity Review on Thursday.
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Beatrice Petrovich, author of the report, said the “milestone moment” marks Europe’s rapid transition away from greenhouse gas-emitting fuels.
When hydropower and electricity generated from decomposing agricultural and food waste, known as biomass, are added, the share of renewables in the electricity market rises to 48 percent.
Nuclear power, which is emission-free, generates another 23 percent of EU energy.
What is behind the rise of solar energy?
This positive tipping point for Europe has been reached by a four-year period of one-fifth annual growth in solar power, partly due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cut off of pipeline gas to Europe.
Much of Europe’s transition has come not from massive investment in industrial-scale solar and wind farms, but from rooftop photovoltaic panels installed on homes. Amber said.
Recent research suggests that this is still an underutilized route to energy autonomy, and that rooftop solar panels could cover 40 percent of the EU’s needs.
Solar and wind power have been growing at record annual rates for 23 years, according to the International Energy Agency, the world’s leading energy think tank, claiming an ever-increasing share of the electricity market. Because the electricity market was growing overall, there was also room for growth in coal and gas consumption. That has changed now, said Amber.
Last October, it was estimated that in 2025, solar and wind power will increase the electricity market for the first time and begin to take market share away from fossil fuels worldwide.
This global transition away from fossil fuels manifested last year as large reductions in coal use in China and India, the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Coal-fired electricity in China fell 1 percent, the first drop in a decade.
‘So much capacity is being added’
Ember said solar power has grown in 14 of the EU’s 27 member states, but some industry insiders warned that too much ambition could backfire.
“In Greece, in 2025, we reach 12GW of installed capacity (of solar photovoltaics), from 9.5GW in 2024, a 25 percent jump,” said Stelios Loumakis, president of the Photovoltaic Energy Producers Association in Greece. “As a result, a quarter of the electricity we generated was cut by the grid,” he told Al Jazeera, as supply exceeded demand.
“We expect it to go up to 40 percent this year. So what we’re doing is increasing capacity tremendously and producers’ incomes are going down,” he said.
“So much capacity is being added now that many of these investors are going to go bankrupt,” Loumakis told Al Jazeera. “The only way to avoid that is to install a lot of electricity storage, but what’s being built right now is still very little.”
There was also bad news in the United States, where emissions rose 2.4 percent last year after two years of decline, thanks to an increase in coal-fired generation, Axios reported, citing research from Rhodium Group.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has pledged not to close any coal-fired power plants and has canceled licenses for offshore wind and onshore solar parks. The US also plans to withdraw $24 billion in federal subsidies for climate projects awarded by the previous Biden administration.
In March, Amber said the US was “far behind the European Union”, as wind and solar power generated 17 percent of electricity in 2024.
Some of Trump’s reversals are taking place in the courts.
A federal judge this month ordered construction of large wind farms off the coast of New York and Virginia to resume, and more orders from the Trump administration are being fought in court.
Legislation and litigation are key tools to make the clean energy transition irreversible, recent research shows.