BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook 2026: Solar to Become World's Largest Electricity Source by 2032, Storage Grows 17x

BloombergNEF released its flagship New Energy Outlook 2026, finding that solar will become the world's single largest source of electricity by 2032 and that global battery storage deployment will jump 17-fold — from 223 GW in 2025 to 3.8 TW by 2035. The report found that recent energy market shocks are accelerating decoupling from imported fossil fuels globally. China's coal share of electricity is projected to fall from 54% in 2025 to just 7% by 2050. Electrification is now expanding rapidly across transport, buildings, and industry. The report marks a historic milestone: not since the age of steam has a single energy technology risen so fast to so dominant a position as solar PV in the current decade.