2025 in data: power capacity and generation, deals and job trends

From symbolic but disappointing shifts to melodramatic trends that skyrocketed, crashed and flattened wrong the span of a year, 2025 delivered a cascade of twists and turns for the planetary powerfulness industry.

Drawing on data from Power Technology’s genitor company GlobalData, this year-end review traces a twelvemonth defined by contrasts. Renewables overtook ember successful powerfulness procreation portion state gained renewed interest; the sector registered record transaction values through fewer deals; and jobs ricocheted nether the value of geopolitics.

The representation that emerges is of an manufacture reshaping itself across capacity, investment and labour.

If 2024 was the twelvemonth of cautious optimism for cleanable energy, 2025 was the twelvemonth the numbers caught up with the narrative.

Renewables took nearly half of the cumulative capacity mix this year. Annual capableness additions appeared adjacent much skewed, with 64.1% coming from star PV unsocial and upwind contributing different 16.4% – together, making up a staggering 80%.

This year’s maturation successful star additions, which GlobalData estimates arsenic 5% higher than 2024’s, was “fuelled by robust request successful China, the US, India, Brazil and rapidly expanding markets crossed the Middle East and Africa (MEA),” says Harminder Singh, GlobalData’s director of powerfulness probe and analysis. He points to supportive argumentation frameworks, climate-aligned national strategies and distributed vigor systems as the key drivers but, most of all, the falling costs.

The star proviso concatenation has experienced oversupply, with accumulation capabilities reaching astir doubly the request for polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules. China has been instrumental as a manufacturing powerhouse, investing over $50bn in star PV proviso accumulation betwixt 2011 and 2022 – and now accounts for 80% of planetary manufacturing capacity. India has also emerged as a new manufacturing hub, boosted by initiatives similar the Production Linked Incentive Scheme.

Consequently, star module prices further decreased, accelerating utility-scale solar deployment. GlobalData reveals that mean star PV task costs have dropped 81% since 2010 and is expected to autumn different 21% implicit the adjacent 5 years.

“This, alongside improved grid access for star PV as galore countries put successful their transmission and distribution (T&D) networks, has made star bankable for investors,” Singh explains.