A recent development shows that the global solar installations are on the right path for yet another record year. It is well to be noted that in the first half of 2025, the world added another 380 GW of new solar capacity, which is 64% higher as compared to the same period in 2024, in which 232 GW were installed.
Apparently, in 2024, it went on to take until September for the overall global solar capacity additions to go beyond 350 GW, whereas in 2025, this milestone was reached in June itself, as per the inference derived from Ember, the energy think tank, in its new report released recently. The very swift expansion when it comes to solar capacity in the years that have gone by has actually made it the fastest-growing source in terms of new electricity generation.
Interestingly, in 2024, global solar output surged by 28% as compared to 2023, and that too more than any other source. According to Senior Energy Analyst with Ember, Nicolas Fulghum, these latest numbers pertaining to solar deployment in 2025 go on to defy gravity, with yearly solar installations continuing their sharp surge. He added that in a world that consists of volatile energy markets, solar goes on to offer domestically produced power that can be deployed at record speeds so as to meet the rising demand, which is independent of global fossil fuel supply chains.
Notably, China remains the worldwide leader of this surge. In the first six months of 2025, its installations went on to more than double as compared to the same period in 2024. Due to this, China went on to add twice as much solar capacity as compared to the rest of the world combined, thereby making up 67% of the worldwide total.
The fact is that in the first half of 2024, China made almost 54% of global solar installations. This growth was throttled partly due to the developers racing to complete their respective projects before the new rules pertaining to wind and solar compensation took shape in June 2025. While this may as well lead to a slowdown as far as the second half of 2025 is concerned, the new clean power procurement needs for the industry and higher full-year roll-out expectations from the solar PV association—CPIA of China—go on to suggest that 2025 is surely going to go beyond the record high installations that were witnessed in 2024. Outside of China, all other nations put together installed almost 124 GW in the first six months of 2025, which was 15% higher as compared to the first half of 2024.
Interestingly, India went on to record the second-highest installations at 24 GW, which was a 49% increase over the already robust 16 GW that was added in deployment in the first six months of 2024. The US ranked third with 21 GW, which was up 4% year-on-year, in spite of the recent moves by the US government to go ahead and restrict clean power rollout. Deployment went on to witness a slight dip in countries such as Germany and Brazil. The remaining countries went ahead and added 65 GW in the first half of 2025, which was 22% more than the first half of 2024. Apparently, the growth in Africa is also seen to be taking off, as the number of solar panels it went ahead and imported from China grew 60% in the last year. But the dearth of access to the official installation data still masks the actual pace of solar rollout in the continent. With deployment growing across major markets and also the fast scale-up that’s pushing global installations to new highs, 2025 looks to be on track so as to become yet another historic year as far as solar power is concerned. The numbers underscore not just the momentum of solar but also its important role when it comes to reshaping the overall energy system of the world.
