Solar and Other Renewables Keep Breaking Records, Both Nationally and Globally

Clean energy just had its biggest year ever — and the records keep piling up.

In 2025, the world added more renewable power capacity than in any previous year, with solar and wind alone accounting for nearly all of it, according to new data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In the United States, renewables outpaced natural gas for the first time, regional electric grids from Texas to New England set generation records this spring and federal forecasters say 2026 is on track to be even bigger. The message from the data is clear: the clean energy transition has moved from a long-term trend to a present-tense reality.  

IRENA released new renewable capacity statistics in a March 2026 report, showing that in 2025 global renewable power capacity increased by 692 gigawatts (GW), or 15.5%, with the highest annual increase in renewable generation capacity on record. Together, renewables accounted for 85.6% of the total global capacity expansion in 2025, the report added. That means that for every new watt of electricity capacity added to the global grid last year, clean energy sources provided nearly none out of ten. Clean energy is the dominant story of how the world is building its power infrastructure.  

IRENA also reported that solar represented approximately three-quarters of the capacity increase, with an addition of 511 GW in 2025, up 27.2%. Other renewables’ capacity increased, too: wind energy by 159 GW (+14.0%), hydropower by 18.4 GW (+1.4%), bioenergy by 3.4 GW (+2.3%), and geothermal energy by 0.3GW (+1.7%). Together, solar and wind accounted for 96.8% of renewable capacity expansion for the year, according to the IRENA report.

And it’s not just capacity. In an Electricity 2026 report released this February, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that 2025 boasted the largest year-on-year increase in global electricity generation from solar PV, which rose from 450 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to 620 TWh in 2025. Plus, the IEA noted that solar PV generation is expected to surpass wind and nuclear this year and hydropower by 2029. Hydropower took over a century to build out; solar is on track to leapfrog it in just a few years.  

Renewables are also making record progress in the United States. In April, the think tank Ember reported that renewables produced more than a third of U.S. electricity for the first time ever in March, even overtaking gas electricity generation. For that month, renewables generated 35% of the U.S. electricity, while gas generated 34%.For context, natural gas has dominated US electricity generation for more than a decade, so dethroning it, even for a single month, is a meaningful signal of where generation is headed.  

And now that spring has sprung — with longer days providing more sunlight to solar panels, windy weather powering wind turbines, and snowmelt and rainfall boosting hydropower — regions around the United States are charting their own renewable records, as Canary Media pointed out.

For example, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) set a wind power record on March 14, with more than 28,000 megawatts (MW) generated, according to GridStatus.io. A week later, ERCOT broke a solar power record, with more than 33,000 MW generated. And this spring has seen records for solar power in other regional grids, too, including the Southwest Power Pool, the PJM Interconnection, the Independent System Operator New England (which also set a wind power generation record), and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (with also set a record for overall renewables generation), per Canary Media.

The good news keeps coming. This February, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected that new U.S. electricity generating capacity was expected to reach a record high of 86 GW in 2026, with solar power accounting for 51% of that expansion, battery storage making up 28%, and wind contributing 14%. According to the EIA report, developers plan to install 43.4 GW of new utility-scale solar capacity this year, which would be a 60% increase in capacity additions over 2025.

As the largest owner of commercial-scale solar in the United States, Altus Power is part of what these numbers actually represent: clean electricity being generated where it’s used- at schools, businesses, towns and households- at a price that makes the transition work economically, not just environmentally.