Global Progress Toward Renewable Electricity: Tracking the Role of Solar (Version 3)

2022 was a milestone year for photovoltaics (PV), with cumulative installed global capacity exceeding 1 TW. PV represented 56% of newly installed global electricity generating capacity for 2022, the second year in a row that this metric exceeded 50%. The combined contributions of nonhydro renewable electricity generation (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and biomass) was comparable to that of hydropower for the first time in history. However, the total combination of carbon-free generation sources (hydro, nuclear, and renewables) stayed constant at ∼38% of total electricity, with the annual growth in overall generation (∼2%) balancing the large fractional growth in solar (25%) and wind (14%). Following its initial publication in 2021 with 1990–2020 data, this annual article will continue to collect information from multiple sources and present it systematically as a convenient reference for IEEE JPV readers. This year, for the first time, we present data on the growth of storage capacity. We find that growth of stationary battery storage now exceeds growth of pumped hydropower storage. That same annual investment in new stationary batteries, however, is small compared to the growth of battery storage in electric vehicles.