Roughly one-seventh of the world’s total primary energy now comes from renewable sources, including solar, wind, hydropower, and modern biofuels. That works out to about 14% of all energy consumed globally. But that single number hides a more nuanced picture, because renewables play a much bigger role in electricity than they do in the broader energy mix, and their share is growing faster than most people realize.
Why There Are Two Different Numbers
You’ll often see two very different statistics quoted for renewable energy, and both are correct. The difference comes down to what’s being measured: total energy or just electricity.
Total primary energy includes everything: the gasoline in your car, the natural gas heating your home, the jet fuel powering a flight, and the electricity running your lights. When you look at the full picture, renewables supply about 14% globally. That’s because transportation and industrial heat still run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels.
Electricity is a different story. In 2024, renewables alone generated 32% of the world’s electricity. Add nuclear power to the mix and low-carbon sources crossed 40% of global electricity generation for the first time. Hydropower contributed 14%, wind 8%, solar 7%, and other renewables about 3%. So if someone tells you renewables are at 14% and someone else says 32%, they’re measuring different things.
How Much Renewable Energy the U.S. Uses
The United States consumed 94.2 quadrillion BTUs of energy in 2024. Renewable energy accounted for 8.6 quads of that total, a new record and a 5% increase over the prior year. That puts renewables at roughly 9% of total U.S. energy consumption, well below the global average, largely because the U.S. economy is heavily dependent on petroleum (35.3 quads) and natural gas (34.2 quads, itself a record high in 2024).
The EIA projects that renewables will supply 44% of U.S. electricity generation by 2050 under current laws and regulations. Solar is expected to overtake wind as the largest renewable electricity source by the early 2030s.
Which Countries Lead
Some countries have pushed renewables far beyond global averages. Within the European Union, where renewables reached 47% of electricity generation in 2024, three countries stand out. Denmark generated 88.4% of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind. Portugal followed at 87.5%, relying on a combination of wind and hydropower. Croatia reached 73.7%, driven primarily by hydropower.
These leaders share common traits: relatively small populations, strong wind or hydro resources, and decades of policy support. Larger economies face a steeper challenge simply because their energy demand is so much greater and harder to redirect.
How Fast Renewables Are Growing
Global renewable power capacity hit 4,448 gigawatts in 2024 after adding 585 GW in a single year, a 15.1% annual growth rate. Renewables accounted for 92.5% of all new power capacity added worldwide. In other words, for every new power plant built on the planet, the vast majority was wind, solar, or another renewable source.
Renewables also led all energy sources in supply growth globally, responsible for 38% of the increase in total energy supply. Natural gas followed at 28%, coal at 15%, oil at 11%, and nuclear at 8%. Solar drove the largest share of that renewable growth, with installations continuing to break records across Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Cost Is Driving the Shift
The economics have tilted decisively. For new power plants entering service in 2030, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates onshore wind will cost about $30 per megawatt-hour and solar photovoltaic about $32 per megawatt-hour. A new natural gas combined-cycle plant, by comparison, comes in around $59 per megawatt-hour, nearly double. Solar is now cheaper than natural gas in most U.S. regions even without tax credits.
New coal plants have essentially dropped out of the cost comparison in the U.S. altogether. The EIA no longer even models conventional coal in its cost projections. Natural gas with carbon capture technology runs about $88 per megawatt-hour, roughly three times the cost of wind or solar.
Battery Storage Is Catching Up
The main knock against solar and wind has always been intermittency: the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Battery storage is closing that gap faster than most forecasts predicted. Global utility-scale battery capacity grew 12-fold between 2020 and 2024, reaching 124 GW after a record 63 GW was added in 2024 alone.
To put that trajectory in perspective, global battery capacity was below 10 GW as recently as 2019. It doubled within two years, tripled by 2023, and then nearly doubled again in 2024. The IEA estimates that storage capacity needs to reach 1,500 GW by 2030 to support the global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity. Battery costs continue to fall, and the pipeline of announced projects suggests the industry is on track to approach that target.
The Gap Between Electricity and Everything Else
The reason renewables score so much higher for electricity (32%) than for total energy (14%) comes down to sectors that are hard to electrify. Shipping, aviation, heavy trucking, steel production, and cement manufacturing still rely almost entirely on burning fossil fuels. Heating buildings with natural gas or oil remains common in much of the world.
Closing that gap requires more than just building solar farms and wind turbines. It means electrifying transportation, switching industrial processes to electric heat or hydrogen, and retrofitting buildings. The electricity grid is where renewables have made the most progress, but it represents only a portion of total energy demand. Until those harder-to-reach sectors shift, the headline number for total energy will continue to lag well behind the electricity figure.