Euronews.green writes that these are the findings of researchers at energy think tank Ember, who suggest that extending solar and wind power installations helped surpass the previous milestone, set in 2022. They analyzed data from 80 countries which account for 92% of the world's power demand, as well as historic data from 215 states, claiming that fossil-generated energy starts to experience a decline.

Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights, said that "the renewables future has arrived. Solar in particular is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible."

Last year, solar panels were the world's largest energy generators, supplying over twice as much energy compared to coal plants, maintaining their status as the fastest-growing energy source for the 19th year in a row.

EU countries are generating 44% of their energy from renewables, which helps the region be at the forefront of carbon-free power and the rapid expansion of solar and wind farms contributed with 17% to the global growth in 2023.

As a result of the energy crisis, overall demand shrunk, which helped relieve the reliance on fossil fuels to compensate the demand. Experts believed that power demand would grow once more in late 2023 - early 2024, but they said that the population seems to have adopted a more conservative energy consumption habit.

Sarah Brown, Ember’s European program director, said that "certainly you can't ignore that there was some demand [based] impact on the decrease in use of fossil fuels, but also there was a significant role of wind and solar replacing it."

Ember researchers say that the renewable power generation would have been higher last year, if it wasn't for the droughts that affected many hydro-focused countries, including China. Droughts caused countries such as China, Vietnam and Mexico to rely on coal for power production, which increased the use of the source by 95% compared to the previous year.

Dave Jones added that "2023 was likely the pivot point - peak emissions in the power sector - a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues."