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I wrote about the 75th edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy a few days ago with some bad news, that the US accounted for 47% of the world’s CO2 emissions growth in 2025, due in part to completely fossil/pollution-biased Trump administration policies and due in part to the gigantic explosion in AI infrastructure. However, there’s also some strongly positive news from the annual report.
This was a key highlight from the very beginning of the report: “Total energy supply (TES) exceeded 600EJ in 2025, a rise of 1.7% over 2024, continuing the long-term upward trend in energy demand. Renewables were the largest source of TES growth for the first time outside of a recession, with solar power accounting for 71% of this increase.” So, there is a lot to celebrate there among cleantech enthusiasts.
However, some who are less optimistic, or at least less willing to we’ve won when there is so much still do to, will rightfully focus on the sentences that follow in that same paragraph: “Fossil fuels continued to expand in absolute terms and retained their dominant position, accounting for 86% of TES. All sources of energy supply, globally, saw increases in 2025.” So, despite cleantech growing more, fossil fuel supply didn’t shrink — it grew. Fossil fuels also still account for the vast majority of total energy supply. As a result, CO2 emissions continued to grow, by 1.1%. As mentioned previously, though, that was in huge part due to changes in US policy and the AI data center boom. However, even Europe is still going in the wrong direction. “Europe’s CO2 emissions from the energy sector increased by 0.5%.” China’s emissions also increased, but the USA’s increased four times more.
