The Unfolding Solar Power Boom

Superfact 117: The share of electricity generated from Solar Power in the world has grown from essentially 0% in the year 2000, 0.15% in 2010, to 3.19% in 2020, and to 8.75% in 2025. Both wind and solar energy are expanding fast around the world, but solar energy is a strong latecomer to the energy scene.

Solar energy panel harvesting in direct sunlight against a backdrop of clear blue skies capturing the essence of sustainable power generation and eco-friendly technology
Solar energy panel. Shutterstock asset id: 2459435149 by Nordic Studio.

In the year 2000 less than 0.01% of the world’s electricity was generated by solar. In 2005 it was 0.02%, in 2010 it was 0.15%, in 2015 it was 1.07%, 2020 it was 3.19%, in 2025 it was 8.75%. Can you guess what will it will be in 2030? The United States may be behind the rest of the world with respect to wind power and EVs, but it closely follows the rest of world when it is about solar. You can play around with the graph below and select different countries by clicking here.

The graphs shows that the share of electricity from Solar remained nearly zero until the very recent sharp increase.
Share of electricity from Solar. Measured as a percentage of total electricity produced in the country or region. Data source: Ember (2026): Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2025)    OurWorldinData.org/energy | CC BY
This is a bar graph showing an increase of 38TWh from gas, a decrease of 12TWh from oil, and a decrease of 67TWh from coal. The energy from wind, solar, nuclear, and other renewables increased by 850TWh.
Low carbon sources met all of 2025’s electricity demand growth. Change in global electricity generation by source, 2024 to 2025. Total generation rose by 850 terawatt-hours (TWh). Note: “Other renewables” include hydropower, bioenergy, tidal and geothermal. Data source: Ember (2026). This graph comes from this page.

New solar panel technology such as Perovskite Solar cells is being developed. The price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 99% since 1991 and by 82% in the last ten years. New battery technology such as sodium-ion batteries is being developed. One advantage of sodium-ion batteries is that they function exactly like a lithium-ion battery but replace lithium with abundant sodium ions to carry the electric charge. The evolving battery technology makes it easier to store power from solar during the night. SolarPower Europe project that the global solar fleet will more than double by 2030. In other words, the future looks bright for solar power, and that pun was intended.

The graph shows that solar contributed 2.2TW in 2024, and 2.9TW in 2025. Then follows bar graphs depicting three scenarios, low, medium, and high. The scenarios increase rapidly and by 2030 the low scenario is 5.8TW, the medium scenario is 6.6TW and the high scenario is 7.6TW
Three different scenarios / projections by SolarPower Europe. The medium scenario predicts slightly more than a doubling of global solar fleet from 2026 to 2030.

Solar Power as a Share of Electricity Generation Around the World

For solar, the United States follows the rest of the world closely. Some countries have a higher percentage, such as the Cook Islands – 50%, Luxembourg – 30.52%, Chile – 25.06%. If you wish you can take a closer look here, or here, and you can play around with the different graphs. You can pick millions of combinations of countries and regions. For illustrative purposes I am showing some combinations below.

The graphs have different colors. Most graphs start out very low but increase significantly close to and after the year 2020. Cook Islands is an exception. The Cook Island graph shoot up sharply in 2016 from zero to more than 40%.
Share of electricity production from solar. Measured as a percentage of total electricity in the country or region. Some countries utilize solar more than other countries. These graphs include, Cook Islands, Luxembourg, Chile, Greece, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Germany, the World and the United States. Data source: Ember (2026); Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) OurWorldinData.org/energy | CC BY
The graph for the world is brown and the graph for China is blue. The blue graphs reach a little bit higher than the brown graph.
This graph shows that China has expanded their share of solar power a bit faster than the rest of the world. The share of electricity generated from Solar Power in the world was 8.75% in 2025 and in China 11.1%. Share of electricity production from solar. Measure as a percentage of total electricity in the country or region. Data source: Ember (2026); Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) OurWorldinData.org/energy | CC BY
The graph for the EU is blue, for China it is red, for India it is green, for the World it is dark blue, and for the United States it is orange.
This graph shows the share of electricity generated from Solar Power in the largest countries and economic regions in the world. The share of electricity generated from Solar Power in the EU was 13.13% in 2025, in China 11.1%, in India 9.42%, in the World 8.75%, and in the US 8.6%. Data source: Ember (2026); Energy Institute – Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) OurWorldinData.org/energy | CC BY

How Clean and Safe is Solar Energy ?

You sometimes come across claims that renewable energy isn’t really clean energy. The truth is that renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc., is much cleaner than gas, oil, and coal. These energy sources are also much safer and using them saves a lot of lives. As you can see, among the eight energy sources depicted solar is the safest, and among the cleanest. Coal has 1,230 times higher death rate than solar. According to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago Chinese citizens can expect to live on average 2.2 years longer than they would have a decade ago, due to the sharp drop in pollution. This is thanks to the increased use of EVs and renewables such as solar.

The graph depicts death rates and greenhouse gas emissions per unit for different energy sources including coal, oil, natural gas, biomass, hydropower, wind, nuclear power, and solar.
Greenhouse gas emissions and death rates from various sources of energy. Fossil fuels and biomass are based on state-of-the art plants with pollution control in Europe and are based on older models of the impacts of air pollution on health. This means that these death rates are likely to be very conservative. The graph shows that renewables and nuclear energy are the cleanest and safest forms of energy. For further discussion see the article: OurWorldinData.org/safest-sources-of-energy. Electricity shares are given for 2021. Data sources: Markandya & Wilkinson (2007); UNSCEAR (2008: 2018); Sovacol et al. (2016); IPCC AR5 (2014); UNECE (2022); Ember Energy (2001). OurWorldinData.org – Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Licensed under CC-BY by the authors Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser. Citation : Hannah Ritchie (2020) – “What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260202-100556/safest-sources-of-energy.html‘ [Online Resource] (archived on February 2, 2026).

Below are two pictures corresponding to zoom-in of the graph above.

The picture shows the death rates for the eight power sources in deaths per terawatt as horizontal bar graphs. Coal has a death rate of 24.6 death per terawatt and solar has a death rate of 0.02 deaths per terawatt.
Death rates from accidents and air pollution. Measured as deaths per terawatt-hour of electricity production. 1 terawatt-hour is the annual electricity consumption of 150,000 people in the EU. The graph shows that coal, oil, gas, and biomass are a lot deadlier than hydropower, wind, nuclear power, and solar.
The picture shows the greenhouse gas emissions for the eight power sources in tonnes per gigawatt as horizontal bar graphs. Coal emits 970 tonnes per gigawatt and solar emits 53 tonnes per gigawatt. Wind emits the least 6 tonnes per gigawatt.
Greenhouse gas emissions. Measured in emissions of CO2 per gigawatt-hour of electricity over the lifecycle of the power plant. 1 gigawatt-hour is the annual electricity consumption of 150 people in the EU. The graph shows that coal, oil, gas, and biomass are responsible for a lot more greenhouse gas emissions than hydropower, wind, nuclear power, and solar.

Important Climate and Energy Facts

As I said, the misinformation about climate science has bamboozled a lot of people. We know that climate change / global warming is happening. We have also known for several decades that the current climate change / global warming is not natural. It is caused by us, chiefly due to the burning of fossil fuels. Yet many non-scientists dispute it. The scientific evidence is conclusive, but a lot of people know very little about the evidence. It includes satellites directly measuring our greenhouse gases trapping heat, the upper troposphere is cooling whilst the lower atmosphere is warming, showing that the heating is from greenhouse gases, the unnatural speed of the warming is another piece of evidence, isotope studies, climate models, etc. Below are fourteen super facts related to climate science and clean energy.

To see the other Super Facts click here

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

6 thoughts on “The Unfolding Solar Power Boom”

  2. I find the misinformation about climate science quite shocking, and probably wouldn’t have even realized if I hadn’t read your blog, Thomas! It’s great that solar is the safest energy source and seems to be expanding fast around the world.

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  5. Solar is great. My brother put it on his roof in New Hampshire a few years ago. I think now it has paid for itself. I think he said the electric company pays him to buy his over supply. Not sure I got that right.

    On climate change it is happening but the crazies fall on this “even the scientists don’t believe it now” what they fail to see is they all agree it is happening, what they fail to say is that the scientists don’t all agree on the exact time of how it continues, the largest impact or areas, what can be the fallout. They all have different ideas but never did they say the data is wrong.

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