Revealed: How 'unstoppable force' helped world reach 40% clean electricity

Clean power provided 40% of the world's electricity last year for the first time since the 1940s, new figures show.

Clean energy comes from nuclear and renewable sources like wind and solar.

The milestone has been reached thanks to the "staggering" rise of solar, which has doubled in just three years, energy thinktank Ember said in its new report.

And solar was the fastest-growing electricity source for the 20th year in a row.

It now provides 7% of the world's electricity.

But it remains eclipsed by wind, which grew to 8% last year, and nuclear to 9%.

Hydropower - produced by running water, usually from rivers or reservoirs, and the world's oldest and largest single source of renewable power - has hovered at 14%.

Phil MacDonald, Ember's managing director, said: "Paired with battery storage, solar is set to be an unstoppable force.

"As the fastest-growing and largest source of new electricity, it is critical in meeting the world's ever-increasing demand for electricity."

Nuclear energy is considered a clean energy source because it produces almost zero greenhouse gases or other air pollutants.

The report's findings come as US President Donald Trump, in charge of the world's second most polluting country, restricts offshore wind farms and seeks to expand the mining and burning of coal in a bid to fuel booming AI data centres.

China and India, the world's largest and third largest polluting countries respectively, are steaming ahead with their clean power plans.

More than half the world's new solar electricity came from China last year - though it is still building new coal power plants too.

Professor Xunpeng Shi, president of the International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS), said: "The future of the global power system is being shaped in Asia, with China and India at the heart of the energy transition."

Electricity demand on the rise

Despite the rise in renewable power, electricity from more polluting fossil fuels crept up by 1.4% last year due to surging demand, meaning emissions from the sector rose too to an all-time high.

Ember had previously predicted that these emissions would peak in 2023.

But a series of heatwaves thwarted those expectations, as the world turned up the air conditioning to cope with hot weather turbocharged by climate change and the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has since subsided.

Increases in AI, electric vehicles and heat pumps are also driving up electricity demand.

Ember forecasts the growth in clean power will soon outpace the growth in demand, helping to displace fossil fuels from the system.

Bruce Douglas, chief executive of the Global Renewables Alliance, said: "Despite geopolitical and economic headwinds, the renewables industry delivered an additional 858 TWh of generation to the system last year - more than the combined annual electricity consumption of the UK and France."