An aerial view shows the largest single-unit affordable 260MW FISHER-Solar hybrid project photovoltaic power station in Ma’anshan, Anhui Province, China, on July 23, 2025. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Energy Institute has released the 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy, published in partnership with Ember and in collaboration with KPMG and Kearney. The Statistical Review was previously published for more than 70 years by BP, and it remains one of the most useful annual references for understanding the global energy system.
The full report and data can be found at this link.
Over the next month, I will dig into the major categories in the report, including oil, natural gas, coal, renewables, electricity, and carbon dioxide emissions. But the first lesson from the 2026 edition is broad and uncomfortable: the world continues to add clean energy at an impressive pace, but total energy demand is still growing fast enough that fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions continue to rise.
That has been the recurring theme of the energy transition. The problem is not that renewables are failing to grow. Solar and wind are growing rapidly. Batteries are scaling. Low-carbon electricity is gaining share. The problem is that global energy demand keeps rising, and new clean energy is still being layered on top of a system dominated by oil, natural gas, and coal.
In 2025, global total energy supply rose from 592.2 exajoules to 600.3 exajoules, an increase of about 1.4%. Renewable energy rose much faster in percentage terms, increasing nearly 10%. But in absolute terms, renewables added about 3.2 exajoules, while total energy supply increased by about 8.1 exajoules.
That arithmetic explains much of the global emissions picture. Renewables grew quickly, but not quickly enough to cover all new demand and reduce fossil fuel use at the same time. Oil, natural gas, and coal all increased in 2025. Combined fossil fuel supply rose by about 4.6 exajoules, accounting for more than half of the total increase in global energy supply.
Fossil Fuels Still Dominate
In 2025, oil remained the world’s largest energy source at 201.0 exajoules. Natural gas increased to 150.7 exajoules, while coal rose to 166.0 exajoules. Combined, those three fossil fuels supplied about 518 exajoules of global energy.
That means fossil fuels still accounted for roughly 86% of global total energy supply in 2025. Renewables, despite rapid growth, accounted for about 5.9%. Nuclear supplied about 5.2%, and hydroelectricity supplied about 2.7%.
Those shares explain why the transition remains so difficult. Renewables can grow at a high percentage rate and still represent a relatively small share of total energy supply. When the starting base is smaller, even rapid growth takes time to reshape the overall system.
There is a common misunderstanding in energy discussions. Many people assume that if solar and wind are growing quickly, fossil fuels must be shrinking. That is not what the data show. In a growing energy system, both can happen at once. Renewables can rise sharply, while fossil fuel use also rises.
That is exactly what happened in 2025.
North America’s Emissions Warning
One of the most striking findings in this year’s Statistical Review is that North America was responsible for nearly half of the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions. According to the Energy Institute, North America accounted for 47% of the 2025 global increase in emissions, with U.S. emissions rising 3.2%.
That is a notable reversal from the long-term U.S. trend. U.S. emissions have generally declined from their peak, helped by coal-to-gas switching, efficiency improvements, renewable growth, and changes in the industrial mix. But 2025 showed that emissions progress is not guaranteed.
A 13% increase in U.S. coal-fired generation contributed significantly to the increase. At the same time, U.S. electricity demand rose 3%, broadly in line with the global average. The U.S. also accounted for 40% of global data center electricity consumption, underscoring the growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital infrastructure.
This creates a difficult tension. The U.S. added renewable power, with solar generation growing more than 28%. Renewables provided more than 19% of U.S. electricity, and the U.S. now hosts almost 19% of global installed battery capacity. Yet emissions still rose because electricity demand increased and coal generation rebounded.
Solar certainly has not failed. But clean energy growth has to be large enough to meet new demand while also displacing existing fossil fuel consumption. In 2025, that did not happen.
The U.S. Energy Advantage
The report also highlights North America’s strengthening position in global energy markets. Oil and natural gas together supplied more than three-quarters of the region’s energy, supported by abundant domestic resources, especially U.S. shale production.
The United States remained the world’s largest oil and gas producer in 2025, supplying nearly 21% of global oil production and 26% of global natural gas production. The U.S. has produced more natural gas than it consumes since 2016, and in the past three years it has produced more oil than it consumes.
That has major geopolitical and economic consequences. North America benefits from energy abundance, relatively low natural gas prices, and a powerful export position. The U.S. accounted for more than 25% of global LNG exports and 23% of global oil product exports.
This is a sharp contrast with import-dependent regions such as Europe, where high energy costs and geopolitical vulnerability have shaped energy policy since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But energy abundance comes with a tradeoff. A region that produces, consumes, and exports large quantities of fossil fuels will also struggle to reduce emissions quickly unless low-carbon energy scales faster than demand growth.
A Diverging Global System
The 2026 Statistical Review shows an energy system moving in several directions at once.
Asia Pacific remained by far the largest energy-consuming region, with total energy supply rising to 283.8 exajoules. China alone accounted for 162.2 exajoules, more than one-quarter of the global total. India’s energy supply continued to rise, reaching 39.1 exajoules.
North America’s total energy supply rose to 113.7 exajoules, led by the United States. Europe’s energy supply was essentially flat, rising only modestly to 72.1 exajoules, while the Middle East and Africa both continued to grow.
This regional divergence is one of the defining features of the modern energy system. Europe is trying to reduce fossil fuel dependence. North America is strengthening its role as an oil and gas exporter while also expanding renewables. China is building more renewable energy than any other country while still consuming huge amounts of coal. India and other developing economies are increasing energy consumption as they grow.
There is no single global energy transition. There are regional transitions, shaped by resource endowments, politics, income levels, industrial structure, security concerns, and affordability.
The Solar Breakthrough Is Real
The most encouraging trend in the report is the continued rise of solar power. In the United States, solar grew more than 28% in 2025. Globally, renewables increased from 32.2 exajoules to 35.4 exajoules. That was the fastest-growing major energy category in the data.
Solar is no longer a niche contributor. In many regions, it is now one of the cheapest sources of new electricity. Batteries are also becoming more important, helping shift solar output into higher-value hours and improving grid flexibility.
But deployment alone is not enough. Grids, storage, transmission, backup generation, permitting, and demand management must all keep pace. Otherwise, renewable growth can be constrained by the physical limits of the power system.
The next phase of the transition will be less about whether solar can grow. It clearly can. The harder question is whether the rest of the system can adapt quickly enough to convert renewable growth into sustained fossil fuel displacement.
The Big Picture
The 2026 Statistical Review tells a familiar story, but with new urgency. The world is producing and consuming more energy than ever. Renewables are growing rapidly. Solar is breaking through. Batteries are scaling. Low-carbon electricity is gaining ground.
But oil, natural gas, and coal are still growing too.
That is why global emissions continue to rise. The world is not yet replacing fossil fuels quickly enough. It is adding clean energy into a system where total demand keeps expanding.
The transition is real, but so is the scale of the incumbent energy system. Fossil fuels still supply roughly 86% of global total energy. That share will not fall quickly unless clean energy growth accelerates, efficiency improves, electrification expands, and total fossil fuel demand begins to decline.
In the coming articles, I will dig deeper into the individual fuels and regional trends. But the overview from this year’s Statistical Review is clear: the world made impressive progress in clean energy in 2025, yet the overall system still moved further into record territory for energy consumption and emissions.
The energy transition is advancing. It just is not yet advancing fast enough to stop emissions from rising.
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