Solar edges past nuclear worldwide as its cost keeps falling

Ember data show solar generation passing nuclear in 2025, with solar now covering most of the growth in global electricity demand.

Solar power has moved from a rounding error to a major source of electricity in about a decade. It supplied roughly 1% of world electricity then. Data from the UK think tank Ember show it narrowly passed nuclear worldwide in 2025. The BBC's analysis of Ember figures for the 12 months to September 2026 puts solar output 13% above nuclear. The reporting says solar will almost certainly reach about 10% of global power in 2026. That full-year figure is a forecast, not a final result.

The scale of the shift is clear in the growth numbers. Nuclear generation has been roughly flat since 2000, while solar generation has risen about 2,700-fold. In 2025 solar met three-quarters of the growth in global electricity demand and overtook wind as the largest source of new electricity. Solar became the cheapest electricity in history in 2020, and a sharp fall in panel prices in 2023-24 pushed costs lower again. Ember's Dave Jones says a panel costs well under $100 and can generate for 30-40 years.

For energy abundance, this matters because the cheapest source is also the one growing fastest, and it is spreading to places that never had cheap power. Pakistan's solar share rose from under 2% in 2019 to 24%. Africa is installing about 100,000 panels a day. India's new solar covered 60% of its demand growth over two years, and over a third of Australian homes have rooftop solar. Oxford's Jan Rosenow says mainstream outlooks, including the IEA's, underestimated solar by assuming linear growth and slowly falling costs. One study estimates US wind and solar produced $249bn in climate and health benefits from 2019 to 2022.

There are caveats. Much of the analysis comes from interviews, including Ember's co-founder, whose organisation produced the data. US experts expect tariffs and federal policy to raise costs and slow expansion. Our source text also cuts off partway through the article's list of reasons, during the section on batteries, so that part of the argument is missing.

Source: Google News