- The global clean power pipeline surged to nearly 5 terawatts last year, with the Global South driving that growth, demonstrating leadership and visionary planning.
- China’s renewables expansion in 2025 put the country’s emissions in reverse for the first time; meanwhile, coal capacity additions reached a 10-year high.
- Driven by a demand for energy-hungry AI and data centers, the US leapt into the lead of countries with gas plants in development, surpassing China and accounting for nearly one quarter of the world’s total.
- Half of the total steelmaking capacity in development uses electric arc furnace (EAF) technology, which is less polluting than the traditional basic oxygen furnace, with India now playing a decisive role in whether global steelmaking will achieve the IEA’s goal of 37% EAF by 2030.
Insights like these are informing the global dialogue on the energy transition, from inspiring policy change to underpinning investment decisions to grassroots organizing. These facts, drawn from GEM’s data trackers, are translated into reports and briefings which are essential to understanding where the world’s energy system is today and providing the headlights to understand how it will look tomorrow. But none of this discovery would be possible without the careful data collection and analysis carried out by GEM’s researchers, analysts, and project managers. From my first day as the Executive Director of GEM last July, I have been proud and inspired to lead this talented team of nearly 100 experts around the world.
In 2025, a year marked by competing narratives and profound disruption across sectors and political boundaries, GEM held the center on the facts by focusing on what is verifiable. We tracked where the transition is accelerating, and where there is a high risk of fossil fuel lock-in. With misinformation on the rise and democracy and truth itself on shaky ground, GEM is a steady source of truth outshining rampant disinformation. I know this both as a data user myself, and now as the Executive Director of GEM for nearly a year.
In 2025, a year marked by competing narratives and profound disruption across sectors and political boundaries, GEM held the center on the facts by focusing on what is verifiable. We tracked where the transition is accelerating, and where there is a high risk of fossil fuel lock-in.
Always striving to add more value to our offerings and thus drive more impact, GEM is attuned to the needs of our users and responds with new datasets, useful data visualization tools, and sometimes entirely new trackers. In 2025 we launched two new tracker tools: the Global Cement and Concrete Tracker and a precursor to a tracker, the Global Chemicals Inventory, both from our Heavy Industry team. You can read more about data updates like these in the Highlights of our Work section of this report.
In addition to data tools and insights,GEM is known for our flagship sectoral reports, which are highly anticipated by industry experts and widely cited. “Boom and Bust Coal 2025” revealed that new coal power additions fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2024, with just 44 GW coming online globally — nearly 30 GW below the annual average. This definitive annual survey of the global coal fleet was cited in 414 news articles, including in Infobae, Detik, Bloomberg, El País, The Economic Times, and Reuters. And it came together not just with immense work from our Coal, Communications, and Data teams under the leadership of Global Coal Mine Tracker Christine Shearer, but also with the help of more than a dozen partner organizations from across the globe.
A special report we published in 2025, “Bright Side of the Mine,” was a ground-breaking analysis of the opportunity to convert more than 400 decommissioned or soon-to-close surface coal mines to solar farms. Cheng Cheng Wu, manager of GEM’s Global Energy Transition Tracker, conducted a worldwide survey of surface coal mines closed in the last five years or closing over the next five, and found the potential for an added 288 gigawatts (GW) of new photovoltaic solar capacity.
Not only was this report cited in The Guardian, The Times of India, El País, CNN Türkiye, and more than 470 others, but it was disseminated among GEM’s partners on the ground in the “iconic zones” that are the focus of GETT’s analysis. Iconic zones are regions around the world that have the potential to engage civil society in transitioning away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. Cheng Cheng has been traveling the globe meeting with partners to inform and advance this innovative project.
This annual report is not just a recap of the work we undertook in 2025. It’s a look into how GEM operates internally and externally, why it matters, and the positive changes we’re mobilizing in the world. You might also notice some changes in the report itself. We recently completed an extensive refresh of our brand and website, making our online tools more accessible and powerful. There’s more to come, including exciting new advances in the way GEM presents our data to users. My thanks to our Communications and Data teams for spearheading these organization-wide efforts.
I’d like to acknowledge the hard work that comes from all of our teams at GEM to power this work and initiate extensive impact throughout our energy ecosystem: Administration, comprised of Finance, Fundraising, and Executive Leadership; People and Culture; Communications; Data; and our Program teams, which are Coal, Heavy Industry, Oil and Gas, Renewables and Other Power, and Special Projects.
My gratitude goes out to our board of directors for guiding GEM through yet another year of disruption beyond our walls and progress within the organization. Our donors and funders, too, are core partners in this work, whose visionary support empowers everything we do. And I thank you, our data users and partners and report readers, for being a part of our network. We couldn’t accomplish this without you, and we have so much more to achieve together.
Sincerely,
Justin Locke
Executive Director
