Renewable energy and EVs have grown so much faster than experts predicted 10 years ago

Most climate reports are bleak. Temperatures are soaring. Sea levels are rising. Companies are missing—or abandoning—their emissions targets.

But a new report from the nonprofit Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit looks at the surprising amount of progress that’s happened since the Paris climate agreement 10 years ago.

Renewable energy has grown faster than every major forecast predicted in 2015. There’s now four times as much solar power as the International Energy Agency expected 10 years ago. Last year alone, the world installed 553 gigawatts of solar power—roughly as much as 100 million U.S. homes use—which is 1,500% more than the IEA had projected. Investors are now pouring twice as much into renewables as into fossil fuels.

One out of every five new cars sold is now an EV; a decade ago, that was one in 100. Even if growth flatlined now, the world is on track to reach 100 million EVs by 2028. Dozens of countries have net zero goals that are legally mandated, and comprehensive climate laws. Out of the world’s largest 2,000 companies, nearly 1,300 now have net zero goals in place. Ten years ago, the world was on track to hit a catastrophic 4 degrees of global warming by the end of the century. Now, projections have dropped to 2.6 degrees—not nearly enough, but a major step in the right direction.

Typical climate reports, like the U.N.’s Emissions Gap Report, focus on how far off track the world is. “They say the same thing every time, basically: that we’re not doing enough,” says John Lang, net zero tracker lead at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit. “That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that we have made unbelievable progress, and we’ve laid the foundations for structural, sustained emissions declines over the next few decades.”

Ten years ago, projections about the growth of renewable energy were wrong in part because modelers underestimated how the scale of manufacturing in China could help drive costs down. Solar is now 66% cheaper than it was just a decade ago. In 2024, the cost of lithium-ion batteries fell by 20% in a single year. Globally, 91% of renewable energy projects are cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives.

There are obvious challenges now, particularly the The President administration’s anti-climate push and supply chain bottlenecks from increased protectionism. Still, “the market’s more powerful than a man,” Lang says. Renewable energy will continue to grow. In China, emissions have been dropping since March of last year. China is also exporting clean energy technology to other countries. In the U.S., 19 states representing half of the country’s GDP still have net zero targets in place.

“The story since 2015 is essentially around innovation, and through constraints, we’re going to see more innovation,” he says. “So despite the protectionism, I don’t see this unstoppable momentum slowing down.”

The world still has a very long way to go. The planet has already heated up by 1.3 degrees Celsius, and we’re seeing the catastrophic impacts, from more severe hurricanes and wildfires to dying coral reefs. There’s little chance that we can avoid heating up more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, one of the goals of the Paris agreement. But every tenth of a degree of warming matters, and there’s still time to change the trajectory.

“This decade was always going to be about laying foundations,” says Lang. “It’s not as quick as the IPCC would like us to go. But the reality is that this is hard. I always think of Emmanuel Kant’s quote, ‘From the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight has ever been made.’ This is difficult stuff politically and culturally, and it is the biggest energy transition that humans may ever go through.”

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