Introduction: Cherry-Picking a “Clean” Story

Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2025 declares a milestone—over 40% of global electricity now comes from “clean” sources. But before hanging up a “Mission Accomplished” banner on fossil fuels, it’s worth asking: what’s missing from this picture? As it turns out, quite a lot.

A deep dive into the report reveals a narrative built on selective framing, unexamined assumptions, and economic blind spots. It tells a story of solar triumph and fossil decline, but only by focusing narrowly on electricity generation—which accounts for just a fifth of global energy use.

This blog post exposes the omissions, distortions, and wishful thinking in Ember’s review, and challenges the illusion that we are on the cusp of a clean energy utopia.

1. A Narrow Focus: Electricity ≠ Energy

Perhaps the most critical flaw in Ember’s report is also the most fundamental: it focuses exclusively on electricity, ignoring the rest of the global energy system. Electricity makes up roughly 20% of final energy consumption. The other 80%—transportation, industrial heating, residential heating, agriculture, and more—remains firmly tethered to fossil fuels.

By reporting progress in this sliver of the energy system while remaining silent on the rest, Ember inflates perceptions of decarbonization. No mention is made of the dominance of petroleum in transportation, gas in residential heating, or coal in industrial processes. Even sectors that are “electrifying”—like electric vehicles and heat pumps—are simply adding new load to the grid, not replacing old demand.

This sleight of scope allows Ember to declare a global transition that exists only on paper, and only in the least fossil-dependent portion of the system.

2. The 40% Milestone: Triumph or Triviality?

Ember heralds 2024 as the first year that low-carbon sources (renewables plus nuclear) surpassed 40.9% of global electricity. But what does that mean in practical terms?

Hydropower (14.3%) and nuclear (9.0%) still dominate the low-carbon mix, yet both are geographically and politically constrained. Solar and wind together—after decades of subsidies—account for just 15% of electricity, and 6.9% and 8.1% of total generation, respectively.

Meanwhile, fossil fuels still make up 59.1% of global electricity, and much more of total energy. This milestone is like celebrating a “healthy diet” because one eats a salad with a bucket of fried chicken.

3. Solar: Exponential Rhetoric, Subsidized Reality

The report portrays solar power as the “engine of the global energy transition”—citing exponential growth, record-breaking capacity additions, and surging TWh. But scratch beneath the surface and two facts stand out:

• China accounted for 53% of all new solar generation in 2024, a figure made possible by massive state subsidies, export dumping, and centralized industrial policy.
• Even after this “record growth,” solar still provides under 7% of electricity and less than 2% of global energy consumption.

Ember frames solar’s doubling as a sign of unstoppable momentum. But when you double a small number, you still have a small number. And unlike hydro or nuclear, solar’s output is non-dispatchable, weather-dependent, and increasingly in need of costly storage.

4. Fossil Fuel Increases? Just Blame the Weather

To explain the rise in fossil generation and emissions in 2024, Ember pins the blame squarely on the weather: heatwaves increased cooling demand, pushing up fossil use temporarily. Without those heatwaves, they argue, fossil use would have been nearly flat.

This is the climate policy equivalent of saying, “My diet is fine except for when I eat.” Seasonal demand surges are a permanent feature of electricity systems, and Ember’s hand-waving obscures the ongoing reliance on fossil backup precisely because renewables are intermittent and inflexible.

5. Battery Boosterism: Ignoring Scale and Costs

Ember gushes about falling battery prices and the potential for “round-the-clock solar.” While lithium-ion prices have fallen, the report glosses over some serious facts:

• Grid-scale storage is not remotely capable of seasonal balancing.
• Battery degradation, mineral costs, and fire risks remain under-addressed.
• California, their poster child, uses batteries for only short evening peaks, not for base load.

Citing a 1 GW project in Abu Dhabi for 2027 as proof of round-the-clock solar is akin to calling a prototype moon base evidence that we’ve colonized Mars.

6. Model-Based Speculation as Certainty

Forecasts abound in the report—solar doubling, fossil fuels declining, clean power outpacing demand growth. But these rosy predictions are model-driven and assumption-heavy.

Ember asserts that even if electricity demand grows 4.1% annually through 2030, clean generation will “keep pace.” But that depends on capacity factor estimates, installation timelines, and political will—none of which are stable. Meanwhile, grid congestion, permit delays, and public resistance to infrastructure receive zero attention.

7. The Political Filter: What’s Not Said

While Ember praises China and India for leading clean growth, it skips the inconvenient truth: both are massively expanding coal. China alone accounted for 74% of the global increase in coal generation. India generated 75% of its electricity from coal in 2024. This isn’t decoupling; it’s growth padded by solar panels.

The report also hints at U.S. “backsliding” toward fossil fuels but ignores the reliability crisis caused by over-reliance on renewables, which many U.S. grid operators and energy experts now openly admit.

Conclusion: A Report of Half-Truths and Whole Omissions

The Global Electricity Review 2025 is less a factual account than a strategically curated story. It tells the most optimistic tale possible about the smallest slice of the global energy pie while ignoring the fossil-heavy elephant in the room.

It celebrates milestones that don’t reflect meaningful shifts in energy security, economic competitiveness, or grid stability. It promotes exponential growth narratives while avoiding hard truths about intermittency, system costs, and physical limits.

Most egregiously, it leads readers to believe we’re racing toward decarbonization—when the data shows that outside electricity, fossil dominance is barely challenged, and even inside electricity, it’s far from over.

H/T Gregory W