The 2025 Review of World Energy was out a few weeks ago and tells a stark story: record consumption across all major energy sources – renewables and fossil fuels alike – as global demand continues to climb.
The good news? Electricity demand surged by 4%, outpacing overall energy growth and underscoring the accelerating shift towards electrification. Wind and solar power saw an impressive 16% growth in 2024, nine times faster than total energy demand! However, a significant portion of this growth (57% of new wind and solar additions) was driven by China.
Despite this progress, the pace of renewable deployment is still being outstripped by overall energy demand. Globally, we’re still in an “energy addition” phase, not a true “energy transition.” This has resulted in a fourth consecutive year of record fossil fuel demand and CO2 emissions. We’re simply not decoupling economic growth from emissions on a global scale.
The chart below illustrates this by comparing Primary Energy Consumption on a per capita basis. While renewables now account for 5.5% of the total energy supply, overall consumption keeps rising. Digging into the data reveals that the Asia Pacific region dominates this growth; interestingly, energy supply per person in North America and Europe has actually dropped over the last 15 years.
So while renewables have been a success story of the past 15 years on the energy front, globally we’re running to stand still.
