The Clean Energy Boom You Missed This Year

This year brought about a number of blows for the climate fight. In 2025, the United States, one of the world’s top emitters, backpedalled on a slew of climate and clean energy goals after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. And it’s become increasingly clear that governments will fail to meet the target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees as laid out in the Paris Agreement; fossil fuel carbon emissions are projected to reach a record high by the end of the year.   

But still, the world has seen a number of clean energy wins as countries make inroads in adopting clean energy. For the first time this year, solar and wind power outpaced coal as the leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025—a promising step towards reducing emissions. 

“It indicates a lot of really important things about the movements within the energy sector as a whole, and that direction is clearly toward reduced emissions,” says Jonathan Elkind, senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

Globally solar has become more affordable and accessible—paving the way for many around the world to adopt it. In 2024, 91% of new renewable power projects commissioned were more cost-effective than any new fossil fuel alternatives, according to data from IRENA, a global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation.

“If you don’t have a tariff on your renewables, which most countries outside of the U.S. don’t have, you’re looking to pay $60 for a solar panel. Most people in the world could afford that,” says Dave Jones, chief analyst at Ember, a global energy think tank.

Pakistan stands out as one example of this trend, with 25% of its utility electricity generated from solar as of June this year—well above the global average. “Solar’s appeared on every roof, everywhere. It’s on large luxury villas and smaller, poorer residences, it’s on factories and government buildings, hospitals and universities,” says Jones. “There’s been a huge burst of solar growth and a large amount of that was funded by individuals able to access cheaper electricity than what they’ve been able to access from their grid company.”

Solar power also became the European Union’s largest source of electricity for the first time in June 2025, while some central European countries including Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have seen solar generation grow at twice the E.U. average rate since 2019.

China has also made major investments in renewable energy both domestically and outside its borders, adding twice as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined—and the country is likely to reach peak coal generation this year, says Jones, meaning the amount of coal used in the country will begin a downward trend going forward.

Even within the United States, where the Trump Administration is pushing instead for investment in fossil fuels, renewable energy saw some growth this year—especially after the Administration announced that they would sunset much of the Biden Administration’s tax breaks for renewable energy at the end of this year. Homeowners around the U.S. have rushed to install solar panels before the tax credit expired. 

Solar and wind together accounted for 88% of new U.S. electrical generating capacity added in the first eight months of 2025, according to data released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in November. 

The clean energy sector hurried to secure federal tax-credit eligibility for wind and solar projects ahead of the credits expiring. One report estimates that 76% of solar projects and 86% of wind projects that were slated to come online by the end of 2028 will receive the Biden-era tax credits. 

While the Administration’s policies might mean that the country sees some pullback from the clean energy sector, Elkind says that the movement likely won’t be killed off easily in the U.S..

“There is going to be some degree of clean energy capacity that will not materialize as a consequence of the pullbacks and the policy reversals, but it would be a mistake to count out the clean energy industries, because the competitive alternatives aren’t looking that great,” he says. 

Renewable energy is becoming too good to ignore. Around the globe, capacity for renewable power is set to rise by 11% in 2025, according to data from Ember. This puts the global goal to triple renewables by 2030 within reach. 

“There’s lots of reason to take heart that we can actually do this,” says Elkind, “we can build a variety of zero carbon resources.”