The State Of Global Power Markets

Highlights:

• Using data from Ember, we analyzed global power generation through the first quarter of 2024

• Global power generation in the first quarter of 2024 was 7,211 TWh, up 5.3% from the same period last year

• Coal maintains the largest share of the global power stack at 36.2%

• All major forms of energy witnessed increases in the quarter with coal up 5.3%, natural gas 3.1%, nuclear 1.7%, wind 8.9% and solar 29.0%.

• Coal generation growth is being driven by China and India, which totaled 70.1% of global coal generation in the first quarter of 2024 versus 60.& in the first quarter of 2019

• China and India coal generation accounted for 25.4% of total global generation in the first quarter, up from 23.0% in 2019

• Global wind and solar generation surpassed 16% in March 2024 for the first time

• Wind and solar generation are up 114% versus 2019 and comprised 15.1% of the global power stack in the first quarter versus 8.1% five years ago

First the good news. Wind and solar generation totaled 15.1% in the first quarter of 2024 and exceeded 16.0% in March, both records.

On the other side of the ledger, coal generation was up 5.3% versus last year.

The increase in coal generation is being driven by China and India, which now represent over 70% of global coal power generation, the highest on record. Put simply, reductions elsewhere are being offset largely by these two countries.

Solar is seeing substantial growth, moving to 5.7% of global market share, up from 4.6%. Due to its higher relative growth, solar appears set to exceed wind generation in two to three years.

Wind power generation continues to grow, but slipped in power stack share from 9.0% to 8.7%

The share of global power generation from natural gas share slipped slightly in early 2024, but remains steady and saw 3.1% growth. Surprisingly, coal generation grew faster than gas during the quarter.

Much works remains to ‘green’ the global power stack.