Key points
- 2025 saw the largest power capacity expansion on record across the BRICS, with additions reaching new highs for coal, oil and gas, solar, and wind.
- Fossil power expansion accelerated, with 125 GW of new coal, oil, and gas capacity added and the largest net annual increase in fossil capacity on record (115 GW), after accounting for retirements.
- Renewable deployment also surged, with solar and wind additions totaling 497 GW in 2025, overwhelmingly concentrated in China and India.
- The BRICS’ utility-scale solar and wind project development pipeline expanded rapidly, growing by roughly one-quarter in 2025 to reach 2,317 GW — around 2.5 times the 927 GW fossil pipeline, which expanded by 12%.
In 2025, nearly every member of the BRICS group commissioned new coal, oil, or gas capacity, pushing fossil additions to record levels. At the same time, solar and wind deployment also reached historic highs — though the surge was overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of countries.
The divergence is most evident in China and India. Both installed record volumes of solar and wind in 2025 even as coal capacity additions surged, with the renewable boom helping halt growth in coal-fired generation. Brazil and South Africa also slowed growth in fossil generation as renewable — mostly solar — capacity continued to expand.
Across much of the rest of the BRICS countries, however, the power mix is changing far more slowly — highlighting how uneven the bloc’s energy transition remains.
2025: The biggest power buildout yet for BRICS
Additions of fossil power capacity within the BRICS group of nations set a new record in 2025, reaching 125 gigawatts (GW), according to data compiled by Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
At the same time, solar and wind additions also hit record levels, totalling 497 GW in 2025, based on the latest available government data.
As a result, annual capacity additions for each of the four largest power sources in the BRICS — coal (93 GW), oil and gas (32 GW), solar (367 GW), and wind (129 GW) — surpassed all previous years for the ten-member group.
Robust growth in electricity demand across the BRICS spurs this expansion of the power sector. While the underlying drivers vary by geography, many members are experiencing robust economic growth; expanding and increasingly affluent populations; and the electrification of transport, industry, and digital infrastructure. In several countries, the expansion of renewable generation also aligns with efforts to strengthen energy security and free up domestic fossil resources for export.
The fallout from the U.S.–Israeli attack on Iran underscores the relevance of these dynamics, though impacts vary across the bloc. The BRICS’ largest oil and gas importers, China and India, remain particularly exposed to external supply disruptions and price shocks. Exporters such as Russia and Brazil may benefit from higher global prices, while countries with more gas-dependent electricity systems — notably Egypt — face greater power-sector risks.
While fuels used in transport, heating, and industry are directly exposed to supply constraints and rising prices, the power sectors of several BRICS members remain relatively insulated. For example, in China and India, electricity is primarily sourced from coal, hydropower, and, increasingly, solar and wind rather than imported fuels.
As electrification of fuel-consuming sectors accelerates, reinforcing the power system becomes a key pathway to improving energy security.
Driven by China, more fossil power across the bloc
The surge in coal, oil, and gas capacity was driven primarily by China, which recorded its largest coal plant capacity additions in more than a decade and its highest-ever oil and gas plant capacity additions. Fossil expansion was not limited to China, however. Eight out of the ten BRICS members commissioned new fossil capacity in 2025.
Even accounting for fossil capacity retirements — which jumped to a five-year high across the BRICS — 2025 saw the largest net annual increase in fossil capacity on record, at 115 GW. This was about 11% higher than the previous peak in 2015.
Five BRICS countries brought new coal capacity online in 2025. China led the expansion, commissioning 78 GW — the highest annual additions since 2007 — and accounting for 84% of all new coal capacity across the bloc. This surge reversed the decline in coal additions seen in recent years and likely reflects a wave of legacy approvals granted during the 2022–2023 permitting boom, when a large pipeline of coal projects was approved in response to power shortages in 2021–2022.
India and Indonesia also recorded significant coal additions. India commissioned 10 GW — the largest annual increase since 2019 and a sharp rise from 4 GW in 2024. The rise reflects the Indian government’s efforts to increase coal capacity by 80 to 100 GW by 2032 to meet anticipated growth in power demand.
Indonesia added 4 GW, its fourth-largest annual total on record, much of it dedicated to off-grid captive power for energy-intensive strategic industries. South Africa completed the final 0.8 GW unit of the Kusile power station — more than a decade after its originally planned start date, while Russia commissioned 185 megawatts (MW) of capacity at Unit 2 of the Krasnoyarsk CHP-3 power station.
Despite building more coal-fired power capacity in 2025, these countries have generally been decreasing coal use for generating electricity. Falling utilization rates point to growing coal overcapacity across the bloc. In China, coal plant utilization peaked a decade ago and has mostly declined since. India’s coal utilization has fallen for two consecutive years, while South Africa’s has been on a two-decade downward trend. Indonesia, meanwhile, faces systemic overcapacity in its on-grid coal fleet.
Seven BRICS countries brought new oil and gas plant capacity online in 2025. China again led, commissioning 22.5 GW. Roughly two-thirds of these additions were located in coastal provinces and LNG supply hubs, with the remainder concentrated in the inland Sichuan–Chongqing gas-producing region.
Brazil and the United Arab Emirates commissioned their largest thermal power plants to date in 2025: Gas Natural Acu’s (GNA) 1.7 GW plant in Rio de Janeiro state and the Fujairah F3 2.4 GW power plant in Fujairah City. These projects increased total operating gas capacity by approximately 7% in Brazil and 6% in the United Arab Emirates.
Elsewhere, Egypt’s gas-fired buildout has stalled in recent years, largely due to fuel supply constraints. Ethiopia, meanwhile, maintains a near-100% hydropowered electricity system, with no known coal, oil, or gas projects under development.
Renewables surge, selectively
While most BRICS nations added solar and wind capacity in 2025, the expansion was even more concentrated than fossil fuel growth, driven largely by renewables front-runners China and India.
China installed a record 315 GW of solar and 119 GW of wind capacity in 2025 — together accounting for roughly 87% of all new solar and wind additions across the BRICS. The surge reflects a combination of drivers, notably developers’ efforts to commission projects ahead of domestic tariff reforms that took effect in mid-2025 and to meet targets set out in the 14th Five-Year-Plan. Solar expansion has been particularly rapid: Total installed solar capacity is now virtually on a par with China’s 1,243 GW of installed coal capacity and will surpass this figure in 2026.
India also recorded a landmark year, adding 37.9 GW of solar and 6.3 GW of wind — both record highs and significant increases over 2024. According to GEM data, a further 50 GW of utility-scale solar and wind projects currently under development could come online in 2026. If realized, these projects would lift India’s total installed solar and wind capacity above its 225 GW of grid-connected coal capacity.
These record additions of solar and wind capacity translated into reduced coal-fired power generation in both China and India.
In China, increases in solar and wind power generation met 94% of the annual growth in electricity demand, which was up 5% year on year. Additional gains from other sources more than covered the remaining demand growth, contributing to a nearly 2% year-on-year decline in coal-fired generation.
In India, coal-fired generation also declined in 2025, driven by a combination of record renewable output and subdued growth in overall electricity demand. Renewable generation more than covered the roughly 1% increase in total power generation, pushing coal-fired output down by around 3% year on year. When distributed solar installations — whose generation is not centrally monitored — are included, India’s total solar generation gains in 2025 were roughly 20% higher than the decline in coal.
Elsewhere in the BRICS, Brazil added 11.4 GW of solar and 1.8 GW of wind capacity in 2025 — below the record levels seen in 2023 and 2024, but still sufficient to lift combined solar and wind generation to around 30% of annual output. These additions significantly tempered gas and coal use in a weak year for hydropower generation, which fell by nearly 6% in 2025.
In South Africa, 1.6 GW of new solar capacity in 2025 marked a year-on-year increase and continues a trend whereby growing, largely distributed, solar capacity is helping to limit further growth in coal-fired generation.
Beyond these renewables leaders, solar and wind deployment across much of the rest of the BRICS starts from a lower base and additions remain modest. Egypt commissioned its two largest wind farms to date — Amunet and Ras Ghareb — and brought its largest solar facility, Obelisk, online in early 2026. However, these additions have not offset rising gas use, with Egypt becoming a net LNG importer in 2025 to meet record power demand.
The United Arab Emirates commissioned another phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. Yet recent reductions in gas-fired power generation are primarily attributable to the completion of all four units of the Barakah nuclear power plant.
Solar and wind projects scale up, but fossils remain
GEM data show that utility-scale solar and wind power capacity in development across the BRICS grew twice as fast as fossil capacity in development in 2025, considering projects that have been announced or are in the pre-construction and construction phases.
The combined utility-scale solar and wind pipeline grew by roughly one-quarter in 2025 to reach 2,317 gigawatts (GW) — around 2.5 times the 927 GW pipeline of coal, oil, and gas projects, which expanded by 12%.
China and India drive the group-wide trend of simultaneous clean and fossil scale-up. Of the 758 GW of utility-scale solar and wind capacity currently under construction worldwide, nearly three-quarters is located in the two countries. China alone accounts for 448 GW — more than half of the global total — while India hosts 125 GW.
At the same time, China and India recorded their highest and second-highest years on record for new coal plant proposals, respectively. Together, they account for 95% of global coal capacity under construction and 89% of all coal capacity currently in development.
The larger utility-scale solar and wind development pipelines in China and India, compared to fossil fuels, together with the fact that more than 30% of this capacity is already under construction, point toward an increasingly contradictory pattern: Coal capacity continues to expand, while coal generation falls, and rapid growth in solar and wind meets most of incremental electricity demand.
Beyond these two renewables heavyweights, other BRICS countries also show growth in clean power pipelines, but with a much lower share of utility-scale solar and wind capacity under construction.
Three BRICS countries — South Africa, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates — saw a significant expansion in their utility-scale solar development pipelines in 2025, with total capacity more than doubling compared with 2024. The share of projects under construction remains low compared with China and India, but it rose noticeably in 2025, suggesting the early stages of a broader acceleration in renewable deployment.
In all three countries, the pipeline is dominated by large projects: Roughly 80% of in-development capacity consists of projects larger than 500 MW, and nearly one-third is paired with energy storage. The countries share comparable motives for the clean capacity buildout. South Africa is expanding solar and wind to diversify its power mix, address chronic electricity shortages, and reduce reliance on its aging coal fleet. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are pursuing utility-scale solar primarily to reduce dependence on gas-fired generation while meeting rapidly growing electricity demand.
Brazil’s utility-scale solar pipeline, by contrast, remained largely flat — likely reflecting several constraints that have weighed on capacity growth in recent years, including curtailment, grid-connection bottlenecks, and high capital costs.
Elsewhere in the BRICS group, power sector development remains heavily rooted in fossil fuels, with only limited signs of a shift toward renewables. In Indonesia, a decline in the size of the utility-scale solar pipeline contrasts sharply with the government’s stated ambition to deploy 100 GW of solar power. Although Indonesia’s domestic solar manufacturing capacity has expanded rapidly in recent years, deployment has fallen well short of the 1,000 MW cumulative solar target set by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources for 2025.
In Russia and Iran, GEM data on in-development power projects suggest that future capacity additions will remain overwhelmingly fossil-based. Coal, oil, and gas projects outnumber utility-scale solar and wind projects in development by roughly 7 to 1.
Country focus on the 2026 BRICS president: India
Although coal remains the backbone of power generation in India, supplying around 70% of electricity, its role in the power mix shows initial signs of a shift.
Following a construction boom in the 2010s, India’s coal-fired power capacity has averaged 5 to 7 GW of net additions over the past decade.
Coal-fired electricity generation has also risen steadily, typically increasing by around 5% annually. The main exception occurred between 2019 and 2020, when a nationwide economic slowdown following financial-sector reforms coincided with the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Outside of this period, 2025 stands out as the only other year in the past two decades to register a year-on-year decline in coal-fired generation, which fell by around 3% compared with 2024.
The year 2025 also marked a turning point for coal plant utilisation, reversing a five-year rise in utilization rate — the share of installed coal capacity actually used to generate electricity.
The decline in coal-fired generation in 2025 was driven by two main factors: record renewables output and subdued growth in overall power demand.
The record year for solar and wind generation followed record deployment of new solar and wind capacity in 2024 and again in 2025. Hydropower generation also rose sharply. Capacity additions were significantly higher in 2025, and above-average monsoon rainfall further boosted output, lifting hydropower generation around 15% above 2024 levels.
At the same time, the extreme temperatures seen in 2024 did not recur in 2025. Milder conditions helped temper electricity demand growth. As a result, the surge in renewable generation more than met the 1% increase in total electricity generation in 2025, pushing coal-fired generation down by around 3% year-on-year.
A return to more typical temperature conditions in 2026 is expected to lift power demand growth. However, despite several heatwave events so far this spring, the rise in coal burn has remained modest year-to-date, increasing by just 0.3% compared with overall demand growth of 3.5%. Solar and wind have recorded the strongest increases, helping to moderate the need for additional coal-fired generation
Even if coal generation does recover in 2026, the ability of renewables to increasingly keep pace with rising electricity demand — combined with falling coal utilization rate — points to a structural shift now underway. In this emerging pattern, coal capacity utilisation declines as renewables steadily erode the dominant fuel’s share of power generation.
This dynamic is even more evident at the state-level, where the largest declines in coal generation in 2025 occurred in states with the strongest renewables growth. Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan registered year-on-year declines in coal-fired generation of 20%, 15%, and 10%, respectively. Together, the trio also accounted for 60% of the year-on-year gains in solar and wind generation nationally in 2025. These trends illustrate how shifts that appear marginal at the national level are more pronounced at the state level.
The pattern of stagnating coal generation alongside growing renewables among India's frontrunner states is supported by a structural shift in power projects in development.
GEM’s data show virtually all of India's utility-scale solar and wind capacity under construction in half a dozen states that account for one-third of coal capacity under construction. On the flip side, two-thirds of India's coal capacity under construction occurs in states pursuing just 2 GW of utility-scale solar and wind capacity under construction.
The preeminence of leading states for wind and solar deployment partly reflects the country's varied physical resources and differing state-level support policies. For example, the northern state of Rajasthan combines excellent solar resources in the Thar Desert with supportive market and regulatory frameworks and ambitious renewable targets. Recent analyses highlight significant opportunities to accelerate state-level renewable deployment by strengthening market conditions and system readiness — particularly through grid reinforcement, electricity market reform, and demand-side efficiency.
As India assumes the BRICS presidency in 2026, its “pan-India” approach will see events held across all 28 states and nine union territories. This creates an opportunity to showcase state-level progress and demonstrate the credibility of a renewables-led pathway for large emerging economies where coal remains dominant. But India’s presidency also invites scrutiny. Its newly updated NDC has been criticised as unambitious, so real leadership will depend not only on showcasing progress, but on demonstrating a willingness to strengthen its own climate ambition.
