Key points
- The global share of natural gas in power generation dropped to 21.8% after its fifth consecutive annual decline.
- Solar energy single-handedly met 75% of the total growth in global electricity demand throughout 2025.
- Global solar power generation expanded by 636 TWh, outpacing gas capacity additions by a factor of 17.
- Out of 124 economies utilizing gas power, 61 have structurally moved past their peak gas generation phases.
- Advanced G7 economies cut collective gas generation by 50 TWh while scaling up renewable grids.
Main Story
Natural gas is steadily losing its dominant position within the global electricity matrix as nations aggressively pivot toward more secure, economically viable renewable energy alternatives.
According to the 2026 Global Electricity Review published by climate and energy think tank Ember on Tuesday, the share of natural gas in the global power mix has dropped for the fifth consecutive year. The fossil fuel accounted for 21.8 percent of global power generation, falling from 23.9 percent. While absolute gas output eked out a marginal gain of 36 to 38 terawatt-hours (TWh), its growth has ground to a near-halt as solar and wind infrastructure scale up rapidly to absorb the world’s rising energy demands.
The data reveals an unprecedented surge in solar photovoltaic deployment, which expanded by a record-breaking 636 TWh outpacing absolute gas generation growth seventeen times over. Solar installations single-handedly supplied roughly 75 percent of the net increase in global electricity demand, whereas natural gas accounted for less than 5 percent of that growth.
This massive disparity has fundamentally decoupled economic expansion from fossil-fuel reliance, with gas demand growth between 2021 and 2025 cratering to nearly half the volumes recorded during the previous five-year block.
The structural transition away from gas is highly concentrated but expanding. Ember’s analysis indicates that 61 out of 124 gas-reliant economies have already moved past their peak gas power generation thresholds, including major G7 industrialized nations like the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Conversely, gas dependency is increasingly bottlenecked in a few isolated regions, with the United States absorbing 26 percent of all global gas-fired electricity generation.
Concurrently, fast-growing emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil are aggressively bypassing gas entirely, leveraging domestic solar capacity and rapidly falling battery storage costs to anchor their grids against volatile international fuel markets.
The Issues
- Managing localized grid instability as weather-dependent solar capacity rapidly overtakes predictable base-load gas turbines.
- Unlocking deep capital investments for cross-border transmission lines to redistribute excess daytime solar power.
- Insulating emerging markets from lingering liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply shocks triggered by persistent geopolitical conflicts.
What’s Being Said
- Outlining the converging economic and geopolitical forces driving the energy transition, Ember’s Senior Electricity Analyst, Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, noted: “The economic and energy security arguments for electricity are increasingly moving in the same direction. As renewable energy sources lower costs while simultaneously reducing the impact of fuel price shocks and geopolitical upheavals, gas is steadily losing the advantages that once made it the default fuel for power system growth.”
What’s Next
- Energy ministries across the G7 will review updated grid-integration models ahead of the upcoming clean infrastructure summit.
- Global investment firms are expected to reallocate infrastructure capital from fossil fuel assets into utility-scale battery storage pipelines.
- Think tanks will publish targeted case studies analyzing how China and India achieved historic fossil generation declines despite soaring domestic power demand.
Bottom Line
By supplying three-quarters of all new global electricity demand and expanding seventeen times faster than gas, solar power has transformed from an alternative energy source into a structural economic pillar, pushing fossil gas into a permanent market-share decline.
