solar

Solar Soars Above Coal as World’s Biggest Source of Electricity

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

Believe it or not there are places love coal so much that they seem to despise their citizen’s health and wellbeing. The rest of the world is moving to renewables rather quickly and this year marks is the first that solar is now the biggest single source of electricity. That’s right: just one source of renewable electricity has overtaken the most harmful source of electricity. The future is 100% renewable!

Solar power delivered the lion’s share of growth, meeting 83% of the increase in electricity demand. It has now been the largest source of new electricity globally for three years in a row.

Most solar generation (58%) is now in lower-income countries, many of which have seen explosive growth in recent years.

That’s thanks to spectacular reductions in cost. Solar has seen prices fall a staggering 99.9% since 1975 and is now so cheap that large markets for solar can emerge in a country in the space of a single year, especially where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable, says Ember.

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Solar is Powering the Syrian Rebuilding Process

- Adam Clare

Syria has started the rebuilding of infrastructure, culture, communities, and more now that the civil war has concluded. The video above shows how Damascus is rebuilding their trains and other core infrastructure. The most interesting thing in the video is the prevalence of solar panels in the city, seemingly every roof has an installation on it!
The future is renewable and that’s made clear as Syria needs to rebuild quickly and efficiently so they can heal and improve the entire nation.

Solar Surges Around the World

- Adam Clare

Solar panels are wonderful: you install them and then you get free energy from the sun. The expensive part of solar panels is buying and installing the panels; after that the costs of operation are basically zero. This is the opposite of fossil fuels since with fossil fuels you buy a cheap fuel tank and pay forever for the fuel. The global economy has finally caught on to the genius of solar energy and are increasing panels at a fantastic pace. Countries that don’t embrace free renewable power will find themselves left behind.

Outside China, all other countries together installed an estimated 124 GW in the first half of 2025 — 15% higher than the first half of 2024. India recorded the second highest installations with 24 GW, a 49% increase over the already strong 16 GW added in deployment in H1-2024. The United States ranked third with 21 GW, up 4% year-on-year, despite recent moves by the US government to restrict clean power deployment. Deployment dipped slightly in Germany and Brazil. The remaining countries added 65 GW in H1-2025, 22% more than in H1-2024.

Growth in Africa is also beginning to take-off, as the amount of solar panels it imported from China rose 60% in the last 12 months, as Ember reported. However, lack of access to official installation data still obscures the actual pace of solar deployment on the continent.

With deployment surging across key markets and China’s rapid scale-up pushing global installations to new highs, 2025 is on track to become another historic year for solar power. The numbers highlight not only solar’s momentum, but also its pivotal role in reshaping the global energy system.

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How Solar Supports Ukraine

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

In the ongoing war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine power plants have been attacked by both sides to hurt military and civilian operations. Beyond the obvious horrors of war the loss of power generation makes heating homes more challenging and people are suffering as a result. As Russia continues to target large power installations the solution is to turn to distributed power generation, and the best for of distributed power is renewable power. There’s now an organization in Ukraine installing solar power throughout the country to improve reliability of the grid and make it harder for Russia to cause blackouts.

What’s more, if we all follow Ukraine’s lead and get off of centralized power generation and move to a renewably powered electric economy then Russia would have fewer customers to sell oil to.

Hospitals save thousands of lives every day providing medical care to the civilian population, and for that they need an uninterrupted electricity supply. Water utilities provide water supply to the population. Solar power plants are a long-term solution to the problem, a reliable protection against possible worsening of the situation, and also one of the first steps for Ukrainian municipalities towards the green recovery of the country.

The non-government organization Ecoclub with the support of the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, launched the Solar Aid For Ukraine Project ITS PURPOSE IS TO PROVIDE UKRAINIAN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE WITH A RELIABLE SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY, WHICH IS SOLAR POWER PLANTS

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Solar Retaining Wall Goes Live in Switzerland

- Adam Clare

solar retaining wall alongside a road

It might seem odd to put solar panels on the side of walls in a region with mountains, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Switzerland. One of the cantons in the country is looking to be powered by at least 40% renewables by 2035 (which is quite achievable); with terrain being scarce it’s hard to place large solar installations. However, retaining walls in some areas get a lot of sunlight depending on their orientations (south facing would generate more for example) and with geography like Switzerland’s there are a lot of retaining walls. The cantons of Appenzell Ausserhoden’s first installation generations 325kW which is the equivalent of 52 Swiss households.

The PV system was anchored on and in the masonry using an adhesive technique. An anchoring depth of a maximum of 90 mm could not be exceeded so that the retaining wall would not be adversely affected.

Due to the close proximity to the asphalt, the solar panels’ components are subject to exceptional corrosion requirements and are anodized for protection. Indirect components are made of aluminum – only the screw anchors are made of stainless steel.

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