The future of solar is looking bright!
Madeleine Cuff | New Scientist | October 23, 2025
Is solar power going to take over the world? The past few years have seen a frankly astounding acceleration in the rate of its deployment, with total generation capacity doubling between 2022 and 2024 to supply a full 7 per cent of the world’s electricity. Just how high can that figure go?
The first six months of 2025 saw wind and solar together pass a historic milestone, generating more power than coal for the first time and making renewables the world’s leading source of electricity. The driving force behind this “crucial turning point” in the energy transition, as the UK-based think tank Ember described it, was the growth of solar. It accounted for 83 per cent of the total increase in the world’s electricity demand in 2025, Ember’s analysis indicates, and has been the largest source of new electricity globally for three years in a row.
