The world’s wind and solar farms have generated more electricity than coal plants for the first time this year, marking a turning point for the global power system, according to research.

A report by the climate thinktank Ember found that in the first six months of 2025, renewable energy outpaced the world’s growing appetite for electricity, leading to a small decline in coal and gas use.

The world generated almost a third more solar power in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2024, meeting 83% of the global increase in electricity demand. Wind power grew by just over 7%, allowing renewables to displace fossil fuels for the first time.

Whenever you see this many numbers packed together into a single graf, it’s a safe guess that neither the reporter nor editor knows what these numbers actually mean and are just running them off a press release.

Let’s break it down.

We have one-third more Joules being generated by solar, so let’s call the 2024 baseline x and throw a dart at 1.3x for 2025, since it’s not quite a third.

Next up, 0.3x = 0.87y. What is y? Who cares? We don’t even know what x is!

And finally z’ = 1.07z, leading to the obvious conclusion that renewables have overtaken fossil fuels for electricity production.

I can’t see how one could intentionally made a more logically flawed argument over hard numbers (the only thing we don’t get).