IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first
electrek.co

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60 points

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Klaster_1

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4 hours ago

37 comments

decimalenough ・ 2 hours ago

Very misleading title: it should be "Solar leads global energy growth for the first time".

Still good news, but a long, long way from solar becoming the world's primary source of energy.

  • eucryphia ・ 15 minutes ago

    Should it be ‘solar leading energy subsidy growth’.

  • iso1631 ・ 41 minutes ago

    > solar becoming the world's primary source of energy

    Solar has always been the primary source of energy, Something like 99.95%, with geothermal taking 90% of the rest and tidal being basically zero

    • leonidasrup ・ 9 minutes ago

      You can look at coal, oil, gas as form of compressed solar energy, because all of them have biological source, stored millions of year ago. It's just burning coal, oil, gas has nasty side effects.

      " Volcanic coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 252 million years ago.

      Extensive burning in Siberia was a cause of the Permo-Triassic extinction " https://www.nsf.gov/news/volcanic-coal-burning-siberia-led-c...

pingou ・ 2 hours ago

"Overall, renewables and nuclear together met nearly 60% of the growth in energy demand".

That's not enough. It's obvious this is going in the right direction but adoption is still too slow, considering how cheap renewables are now (and will be).

  • fulafel ・ an hour ago

    In deed. We are really late in ramping down fossils usage and emissions, and the death toll is higher than the other bad things in the news headlines.

    • 21asdffdsa12 ・ 25 minutes ago

      The problem is also, that solar infrastructure is vulnerable to some of the attack vectors of climate change. The torrent downpours we see now in the us and in Europe - especially in mountainous regions are endangering the traditional valley cities in the hinterlands- the biggest consumer of solar.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_the_United_States_(2...

  • KumaBear ・ 2 hours ago

    Cost is the barrier

    • xbmcuser ・ an hour ago

      Cost is no longer the barrier as today even the upfront cost of solar is competitive against upfront cost for building coal or gas power plant. While there is no cost of fuel for solar. In China and India even solar + battery is cheaper than new coal power plants.

      • ZeroGravitas ・ an hour ago

        New electricity generation has been 90% clean for a few years now and solar the biggest part of it for 3 or 4 years. This new landmark is about energy.

        That's good progress but it does raise some new cost barriers to get over for each new thing we electrify.

        EVs are over this hump, heat pumps replacing boilers are just about there. Some industrial uses are getting there.

        Notably, in electricity renewables went through being cheaper than new build and reduced further in cost to being cheaper than running existing plants.

        We're not quite at that stage for many electrification use cases, though for growing nations without lots of existing assets that's not as relevant.

meibo ・ 2 hours ago

Maybe "accidentally killing fossil fuels" will be DT's singular good deed

  • citrin_ru ・ 2 hours ago

    In a long run - hopefully but in a short run big oil (outside the gulf) collecting windfall profits and Asian countries returning to coal.

    • dv_dt ・ an hour ago

      A substitution of coal for oil, or more likely natural gas, isn't that big a shift of emissions in the short run if it's a stopgap for massive solar and wind investments. Solar and wind install quick.

  • iso1631 ・ 39 minutes ago

    The world's most effective ecoterrorist.

    Greenpeace should name their next ship after him.

  • stavros ・ 2 hours ago

    You can't really attribute to someone something they did unintentionally while trying to do the opposite.

    • fxwin ・ an hour ago

      i think that's why they used the word "accidentally"

      • stavros ・ an hour ago

        Let me rephrase: You can't really attribute to someone something they did accidentally while trying to do the opposite.

    • boxed ・ 2 hours ago

      I mean.. we do all the time no? Hitler tried to make Germany great and made it shit. Mao tried to make China great and killed tens of millions. Stalin, Pol Pot.. the list goes on.

      If we attribute accidental evil, why should we not attribute accidental good?

      • stavros ・ 2 hours ago
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        If Hitler was trying to find a gold mine under Germany and instead found a bomb there that killed a bunch of people, we wouldn't blame him for murder, it was an honest mistake.

        Murdering millions of people wasn't exactly "accidental evil", it was very deliberate. Which parts of what these guys did do you think were accidental?

        • vidarh ・ an hour ago
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          Mao's campaign to kill sparrows was a result of a belief that they were a net loss for harvests.

          Stalin's support of Lysenko was a result of thinking Lysenko was actually able to drive agricultural growth.

          Both mistakes led to mass deaths.

          We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.

          Both of them also killed a lot of people maliciously and intentionally, but a large proportion of their death toll as a side-effect of their oppression, not the goal of it.

          • stavros ・ an hour ago
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            > We still tend to attribute those deaths to those leaders, because their brutally authoritarian rule was what allowed those mistakes to go unchallenged and get fixed before they caused that level of harm.

            What is the analogue here for attributing the rise of alternative energy sources to Trump? Being too incompetent to avoid harm isn't the same as being too incompetent to avoid benefit, because your job is to create benefit.

            It's Trump's job to create positive outcomes. If he creates positive outcomes by accident while trying to create negative ones, he should get panned for trying to create negative outcomes.

            • decimalenough ・ an hour ago
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              Trump's stated goal of regime change in Iran would (likely) have been a positive outcome if it has actually happened. The problem is that it hasn't.

              • stavros ・ 32 minutes ago
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                This is off topic for what we're discussing (whether his accidental positive changes can be attributed to him), and agrees with my general point.

                • decimalenough ・ 20 minutes ago
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                  No, it doesn't, because you're asserting he is "trying to create negative ones".

                  • stavros ・ 18 minutes ago

                    We were clearly talking about the context of energy sources, where he's trying to push something he calls "clean coal". What's the positive outcome there?

internet_points ・ 2 hours ago

> Electric car sales jumped by more than 20% in 2025 to over 20 million vehicles, accounting for roughly 1 in 4 new car sales worldwide.

I wonder if included these numbers in that calculation https://electrek.co/2026/04/16/tesla-cybertruck-spacex-1279-... ;-)

  • jve ・ 38 minutes ago

    1279 units vs total 20'000'000 units or 0,006% doesn't make a difference

    What is interesting is that tesla had 1'636'129 deliveries in 2025 which accounts for 8,1% of that number. That means other vendors are healthy and it is a good thing for EV market.

childintime ・ an hour ago

> And nuclear is making a comeback: More than 12 GW of new reactors began construction in 2025

By the time they are ready they will have contributed so many carbon emissions, that they'll have to run for 25% of their expected life span to get them back. But by the time they are commissioned (~2036), solar + battery + solar-made hydrocarbons will have made them uneconomic, and solar would have made far fewer emissions.

Furthermore, they are big up front money sinks, creating a sunk investment, diminishing the gamma of future options one might have wished to invest in, or take advantage of, something nobody talks about. Investing in nuclear is like willingly tying a brick to your foot, severely limiting your investment options.

They are perfect for government vanity projects, though, where a lot of money can be siphoned off to personal crypto gardens, repeatedly. Money laundering is likely the leitmotiv behind why you see them being built.

zipy124 ・ 23 minutes ago

More importantly, for the first time ever we generate more electricity from renewables than coal!

internet_points ・ 2 hours ago

> Solar added about 600 terawatt-hours of generation globally

> And nuclear is making a comeback: More than 12 GW of new reactors began construction in 2025

Am I reading it right that growth in solar was 50000x that of growth in nuclear? (And those reactors of course won't be finished / online until some years into the future.)

  • Ekaros ・ 2 hours ago

    No, you are comparing watthours to watts. At 90% used factor 12GW would be ~95 TWh.

  • ZeroGravitas ・ an hour ago

    No you're wrong, the nuclear "started construction" and so solar added infinitely more generation than the zero they will generate this year/decade.

    The world did add 3GW of nuclear generation in 2025 but it also closed 3GW.

  • azath92 ・ 31 minutes ago

    I made the same gut assumption, and it points to either poor writing, or deliberately misreading writing that they mix units like that in the same paragraph, where presumably the idea is that we get a feel for growth in both?

    Its probably nitpick correct, because the 12GW is planned capacity, while the solar might be measured use? but simple assumptins or conversions, as another comment points out, get you comparable numbers. taking the title into account, the whole article is a little bit smoke and mirrors on clear communication, despite having plenty of numbers. Thats a shame because it sounds like even unvarnished its good results!

onchainintel ・ 4 hours ago

Sooooo....you're telling me there's a chance! Solar FTW!

spwa4 ・ 35 minutes ago

I wonder what political and trade consequences can be expected when oil actually does start seeing real decreased usage.

I mean one obvious thing has already started: governments taxing the sun (well, solar panels) pretty heavily (meaning above VAT), which I imagine will increase, and what the result will be. It's weird to say this, but solar panel smuggling is actually already a thing now. I used to have a Louis XIV painting somewhere ...

Oil appears to be 33% of total energy usage, and if you count all fossil fuels (oil, coal, nat. gas) it's 81%. What happens when that starts dropping.

  • jahnu ・ 21 minutes ago

    Just to add to your point; The final energy demand is much less than the primary energy we produce due to the energy costs of extraction, refining, transportation, and inefficient end use.

    According to Kingsmill Bond (great name btw) on Dave Roberts' Volts podcast if we magically could replace all fossil energy with renewables today the final energy use would only be ~30% of today's final energy use.

    "We’re pouring, from our calculations, two thirds of the primary energy into the air and wasting it." - Kingsmill Bond

    https://www.volts.wtf/p/clean-electrification-is-inevitable