A Threshold Moment in the Age of Renewables
Global renewables hit 4,448 GW in 2024, with 585 GW added—46% of all capacity. Solar and wind led growth, but progress is uneven and too slow to meet 2030 goals. IRENA urges faster, fairer action. The energy transition is underway, but far from finished.
In the modern energy epic, few moments arrive with the force and finality of a statistical reckoning. That reckoning came last week, when the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published its Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025 report. The numbers—precise, cold, immutable—painted a picture as stirring as it was sobering. Renewable energy capacity had grown by a record 585 gigawatts in 2024, pushing the global total to 4,448 gigawatts. For the first time in history, clean power accounted for nearly half—46 percent—of the world’s total installed generation capacity (IRENA, 2025: p. 1).
But beneath that milestone lay a more difficult truth. The world, for all its achievements, remains behind schedule. The climate clock, indifferent to celebration, continues to tick. IRENA’s report concludes, unequivocally, that current growth rates are not sufficient to meet the international target of tripling renewables to 11.2 terawatts by 2030. To realign with that pathway, global renewable capacity must now grow by an astonishing 16.6 percent annually for the remainder of the decade (IRENA, 2025: Foreword, p. iii). What had once seemed a question of ambition is now one of velocity—and whether the world can move fast enough.
The year’s surge was led, once again, by solar photovoltaics. Of the 585 gigawatts added, solar alone contributed 451.9 gigawatts—a 32.2 percent increase in global installed solar capacity. Wind, though steady, grew at a more modest 11.1 percent, reaching 1,133 gigawatts in total (IRENA, 2025: p. 21). Combined, solar and wind accounted for over 96 percent of all net renewable additions. Their ascent is now a structural feature of the global energy landscape, not a speculative trend.
Yet this rise is not evenly shared. The regional disparities, long noted by analysts, have now become defining features of the transition. Asia led the charge, with China alone responsible for 278 gigawatts—nearly 64 percent of global additions. The G20, collectively, delivered 90.3 percent of all new renewable capacity in 2024. Meanwhile, Central America and the Caribbean accounted for just 3.2 percent. Africa, despite its immense potential, added a mere 4.2 gigawatts (IRENA, 2025: pp. 2–5, 47). Ethiopia stood as a rare bright spot, adding more than 0.5 gigawatts, driven by hydropower and geothermal projects. But these outliers do not change the broader picture. The global energy transition is accelerating—but it is doing so unevenly, and in many regions, perilously slowly.
Other nations are beginning to write new narratives. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan doubled its renewable capacity in a single year, leaping from 2.9 to over 5.1 gigawatts. Kazakhstan, too, is expanding its wind and solar portfolios, signaling a shift in regions long tethered to fossil extraction. In the Middle East, the pivot has become more pronounced. Saudi Arabia, once the global symbol of oil abundance, now boasts 4.7 gigawatts of renewables. Qatar doubled its solar fleet from 824 megawatts to 1.7 gigawatts. These moves, while small in global terms, suggest a shift in energy posture among fossil-rich economies (IRENA, 2025: p. 21).
Europe added 71 gigawatts, with Germany, Spain, and Poland continuing to post strong figures. But the continent’s progress was tempered by the contraction of renewable capacity in Ukraine—a casualty of war, destruction, and instability (IRENA, 2025: p. 48). The lesson, here as elsewhere, is that energy systems are not immune to geopolitics. Infrastructure, no matter how green, remains vulnerable to the darker contours of human conflict.
Still, the numbers alone do not capture the stakes. They do not explain why, even in the face of record-breaking deployment, the path ahead feels so precarious. To understand that tension, one must go beyond gigawatts and examine systems. Despite cost competitiveness, clean power still contends with entrenched utility models, opaque permitting regimes, and supply chain vulnerabilities. Financing remains heavily concentrated in the Global North. And many governments, while rhetorically committed to transition, continue to hedge their bets with fossil fuel subsidies.
IRENA’s deeper data—spread across pages six through twenty-nine—lays bare these contradictions (IRENA, 2025: pp. 6–29). While solar and wind dominate headlines, technologies like geothermal, bioenergy, and off-grid solar remain niche in deployment, despite their importance for specific geographies. In 2024, geothermal capacity grew by just 0.4 gigawatts. Bioenergy added 4.6. Off-grid electricity, a crucial vector for last-mile access in the Global South, expanded by 1.7 gigawatts—nearly tripling from previous years, but still far short of what is needed to close the energy access gap.
And so, the question emerges: What does a half-powered world mean? It is a world that has proven the economic viability of renewables, but not yet their ubiquity. It is a world where technology is available, but not evenly distributed. And it is a world where momentum—however thrilling—is not the same as inevitability.
IRENA’s Director-General, Francesco La Camera, captured the moment well. “Each year they keep breaking their own expansion records,” he said, “but we also face the same challenges of great regional disparities and the ticking clock as the 2030 deadline is imminent.” He urged governments to use their next round of Nationally Determined Contributions—NDCs 3.0—as blueprints for renewable ambition, and called for enhanced international cooperation to support the Global South.
The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, added his own voice to the chorus: “Renewables renew economies. But the shift to clean energy must be faster and fairer—with all countries given the chance to fully benefit from cheap, clean renewable power.”
Indeed, the data has never been clearer. Nor has the choice. The world sits atop a fulcrum of potential. The 2024 surge marks a milestone, but not a moment of arrival. To move from half-powered to fully transformed, the coming years must become a crescendo of policy action, capital mobilization, and technological inclusion. The transition must quicken. But just as crucially, it must broaden.
The energy revolutions of the past reshaped the world—often unevenly, often violently. This one offers a different promise. It can, if carefully stewarded, rewrite the story of human development itself. But that story remains unfinished. And time, like the wind itself, waits for no one.
Source
IRENA (2025). Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025. International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.
https://www.irena.org/Publications/2025/Mar/Renewable-capacity-statistics-2025