Clean & renewable energy

This archive tracks real progress in clean and renewable energy — from solar and wind expansion to grid upgrades and policy wins. Each story focuses on what’s working, where, and why it matters for people and the planet.

Solar panels, for article on Africa renewable energy capacity

Africa nearly tripled new renewable capacity in 2025

By / / Good News For Humankind

African countries added 11.3 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in 2025, nearly triple the 4.2 GW added in 2024, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.The shift reaches deeper than capacity numbers. Of 322 energy projects announced across Africa last year, 253 were renewable — 173 of them solar — while only 22 were natural gas. The economics, as one Kenyan climate finance lead put it, have “decisively turned in favor of clean energy.”The biggest remaining obstacle isn’t technology. It’s financing — African countries face borrowing costs up to three times higher than wealthy nations, owing to political and economic risk premiums that no amount of falling solar prices can erase on their own. Closing that gap could determine whether this momentum reaches the communities who need power most.

Beijing skyline, for article on China CO2 emissions

Clean energy holds China’s emissions flat for two years without an economic slowdown

By / / Good News For Humankind

China’s CO2 emissions have now stayed flat or declining for 21 straight months — a first in modern history, and one that’s happening while the economy keeps growing. New analysis from Carbon Brief estimates emissions dipped 0.3% in 2025, as a 43% surge in solar generation and a 14% rise in wind together absorbed nearly all the year’s added electricity demand. Even more striking, China added 75 gigawatts of battery storage — outpacing peak demand growth and weakening the long-standing case for new coal plants. If this pattern holds, the world’s largest emitter may be quietly showing every country what it looks like when clean energy stops chasing demand and starts outrunning it.

Cement mixer, for article on Kenya seed sharing, for article on electric concrete mixer sales

Electric concrete mixers are booming in China, hitting 70% of new sales

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric concrete mixers are quietly rewriting what “hard to electrify” really means — and in China, they’re on track to make up roughly 70% of new mixer sales in 2025, up from under 2% just four years earlier. The reason is refreshingly simple: these trucks return to the same batching plant every shift, so charging infrastructure can live right where the work begins and ends. In early 2026, Chinese buyers chose pure electric over hydrogen almost unanimously, signaling that batteries have won this corner of heavy transport. Trials are now spreading to the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Australia. The bigger lesson for climate progress: electrification advances fastest not by tackling the hardest routes first, but by recognizing where the work is already bounded enough to make the switch obvious.

Solar farm with sky above, for article on India solar capacity

India hits 150 GW of solar capacity after fastest quarter on record

By / / Good News For Humankind

India’s solar power capacity has crossed 150 GW, with a remarkable 6.65 GW installed in March 2026 alone — one of the strongest single months the sector has ever seen. The growth spans rooftops, sprawling utility-scale farms, and off-grid systems now powering remote communities that the main grid has yet to reach. Behind the numbers are falling panel costs, smart policy choices, and a country choosing to meet rising electricity demand without leaning harder on fossil fuels. With India’s Paris Agreement goal of 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030 now well within sight, this milestone shows that the world’s most ambitious clean energy transitions are no longer aspirational — they are unfolding in real time.

Flexbase redox flow battery in Switzerland, for article on redox flow battery

Switzerland begins work on the world’s most powerful redox flow battery

By / / Good News For Humankind

A redox flow battery rising from a 27-meter pit in northern Switzerland will become the world’s most powerful, capable of running 210,000 homes for a full day once it comes online in 2029. Unlike the lithium-ion batteries in our phones, this one stores energy in two liquid electrolytes pumped through a membrane — a design that’s non-flammable, almost fully recyclable, and built to cycle indefinitely without wearing out. It can respond to grid swings in milliseconds, soaking up excess wind power and releasing it when nearby AI data centers need a steady surge. Projects like this hint at what a renewables-first grid actually looks like: not just cleaner generation, but storage patient and powerful enough to make wind and solar genuinely dependable.

Aerial view of solar farm, for article on zero-carbon electricity grid

U.K. solar generation hits record 15 GW as gas falls to historic low

By / / Good News For Humankind

Britain’s electricity grid hit 98.8% zero-carbon power for a half-hour stretch on April 22, 2025, with gas squeezed down to just 1.2% of the mix. A day later, solar set its own new peak at 15.4 gigawatts, and wind had broken records just weeks before. The shift is striking when you zoom out: renewables made up 3% of Britain’s electricity in 2000, and 44% by 2025. As one of the world’s largest economies shows that running a national grid on almost entirely clean power is genuinely workable, it offers a glimpse of what energy security and climate progress can look like together — and a roadmap others can follow.

Man installing solar panels, for article on solar PV growth

Solar’s 2025 growth is the largest ever recorded for any energy source

By / / Good News For Humankind

Solar power just had its biggest year ever, adding 600 terawatt-hours to the global energy supply in 2025 — more than a quarter of all energy growth worldwide and the largest single-year jump any electricity technology has ever recorded. Battery storage quietly hit its own milestone too, with 110 gigawatts added in a single year, outpacing the best year natural gas has ever had. Meanwhile, electric vehicle sales topped 20 million, already nudging down global road fuel demand. Together, renewables and nuclear met nearly 60% of new energy demand. The takeaway is hopeful but honest: clean energy is finally outpacing fossil fuels in the places that matter most, even as the work of decarbonizing shipping, aviation, and heavy industry still lies ahead.

Solar panel close-up, for article on Chinese solar exports

Chinese solar exports double in last month to hit record high

By / / Good News For Humankind

China’s solar exports hit a record 68.03 gigawatts in March 2026, nearly doubling February’s volume as countries raced to replace disrupted Middle Eastern oil and gas. Fifty nations logged all-time-high imports of Chinese solar equipment that month, with African countries jumping 176% from February alone. Behind those numbers are governments that had been moving cautiously on renewables and suddenly found solar to be the fastest, cheapest answer on the table. Battery and electric vehicle shipments climbed alongside the panels, hinting at a clean-energy package moving together. The takeaway is hopeful even amid hard circumstances: when fossil fuels falter, the world now has a real alternative ready to deploy at remarkable speed.

Rows of solar panels in a Chinese desert reflecting China wind and solar capacity growth under the Five-Year Plan clean energy targets

China plans to double its already massive clean energy supply by 2035

By / / Good News For Humankind

China’s new climate pledge to the United Nations sets a target of 3,600 gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2035 — more than the entire electricity-generating capacity of the United States today, and roughly double what China has already built. The commitment is woven into the country’s next Five-Year Plan, which directs state banks, provinces, and manufacturers to move in the same direction. Because China makes about 80% of the world’s solar panels, every factory it scales up makes clean energy cheaper for buyers in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and everywhere else. That ripple effect is what makes this pledge matter far beyond one country’s borders — it lowers the cost of a livable future for all of us.

Solar panels and wind turbines generating clean electricity for an article about renewable energy capacity

Renewables hit 49% of global power capacity for the first time

By / / Good News For Humankind

Renewable energy capacity crossed a landmark threshold in 2025, with global installed power surpassing 5,100 gigawatts and representing 49% of all capacity worldwide for the first time in history. The International Renewable Energy Agency reported a single-year addition of 692 gigawatts, led overwhelmingly by solar power, which alone accounted for 75% of new renewable installations. Clean energy now represents 85.6% of all new power capacity added globally, signaling that the transition has moved from aspiration to economic reality. The milestone carries implications beyond climate — nations with strong renewable bases demonstrated measurably greater energy security amid ongoing geopolitical instability.