Around the world, clean energy solutions continue to win out as the cheaper, faster, and more accessible option, even as US progress wobbles.
December 17, 2025
Read the original article at rmi.org.
Like any other year, 2025 delivered its share of unforgettable moments: the end of the penny, Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce, the longest US government shutdown in history, and a worldwide Labubu craze, to name just a few.
It was also a year of global progress for clean energy, despite the continued rollback of federal policy support in the United States. Worldwide, for the first time ever, renewable energy produced more electricity than coal, thanks to spectacular growth in the installation of new solar, wind, and battery capacity.
While there is much work yet to do, we at RMI are encouraged by the progress, the hard work, and ongoing innovation that has led to so many clean energy wins this year. Here are our top 10, in no particular order.
1. States accelerated distributed energy and strengthened the grid
States are adopting policies that meaningfully accelerate rooftop solar, storage, virtual power plants (VPPs), and consumer-facing energy programs, making clean energy more reliable and affordable. In Texas, lawmakers passed SB 1202 to expedite rooftop solar and storage permitting by allowing third-party professionals to review and approve plans. As a result, earlier this year solar generated more power than ever before on Texas’ grid. And in Illinois, lawmakers passed the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, which establishes a VPP program to help utility customers save energy and money.
2. Heat pumps outsold ACs in the US for the first time
Heat pumps have consistently outsold gas furnaces since 2021. And in September of this year, heat pumps outsold air conditioners (ACs) in the United States for the first time ever. That milestone matters because heat pumps are essentially bi-directional ACs, meaning the same box that cools in summer can efficiently heat in winter. That’s why swapping an standard AC for a heat pump during routine replacement is the easiest, cheapest way to improve a home’s cooling, cut overall energy bills, and reduce carbon pollution. And with “AC-to-HP” policies gaining momentum in 2025, these trends should continue.
3. Commercial demand surges for clean steel and cement
Corporate demand for clean industrial materials is speeding up across sectors, with companies beginning to pool their buying power to bring low-carbon products to market. With RMI’s support, Microsoft committed to buy “near-zero-emission” steel produced with green hydrogen from Stegra, a Swedish steelmaker. More agreements are expected in 2026 as the Sustainable Steel Buyers Platform — which includes Microsoft — completed evaluating proposals for their first collective procurement process earlier this year. Building on this momentum, RMI co-launched the Sustainable Concrete Buyers Alliance which helps companies such as Amazon, Prologis, and Meta pool demand to stimulate investment in low-carbon concrete production capacity.
4. Green shipping corridors advance across the Pacific and beyond
Two major Pacific trade routes took meaningful steps toward becoming “green shipping corridors” — routes where ports, carriers, and fuel providers coordinate to cut emissions from long-distance shipping. The United States and South Korea finalized an agreement to develop one corridor, laying groundwork for future fueling infrastructure for alternatives like green methanol and ammonia. And on the California–China lane, ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Shanghai expanded shore-power access and advanced plans for green methanol infrastructure.
Trans-Atlantic green trade corridors are emerging as well. The Port of Açu in Brazil and the Port of Antwerp-Bruges are exploring a corridor aimed at producing and exporting green hydrogen–based e-fuels to Europe, which would position Brazil as a major global supplier of clean maritime fuels. These efforts reflect a rapidly growing global network of routes designed to move shipping away from traditional fossil-fuels.
5. Contrails emerge as a key method to cut aviation’s sky-high climate impact
This year’s launch of Contrails.org marks a major shift in how the aviation sector confronts its warming impact, giving airlines and researchers new tools to identify and reduce heat-trapping contrails in real time. RMI’s partnerships and research on the climate impact of CO₂ pollutants and corporate emissions accounting solutions is helping position contrail mitigation as a practical, near-term climate solution.
6. Carbon markets become more connected and transparent
Over 2025, key carbon markets became more interconnected and collaborative. RMI served as a founding co-chair of the Carbon Data Open Protocol (CDOP), which launched with 50 committed organizations from the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), establishing the initial components of a shared data system for describing and exchanging high-integrity carbon credit data. This shared data system has the potential to make carbon markets easier to trust and use over time. RMI added another building block for carbon market transparency with our new Carbon Crediting Data Framework (CCDF), which standardizes the data market to help actors compare and value carbon credits. The CCDF is an integral component of CDOP’s shared data system.
7. A wave of new capital flows to emerging markets
In the latest funding round for the World Bank’s International Development Association, donors pledged $23.7 billion. The bank says this round could mobilize up to $100 billion, which would be its largest package ever. The Climate Investment Funds (CIF) also issued their first capital-markets bond, a $500 million, highly rated bond that was six times oversubscribed. The new bond allows CIF to raise money directly from global investors, front-loading clean energy investment for emerging markets instead of waiting on annual donor contributions. And in a development with even broader implications, S&P Global Ratings revised its criteria for assessing multilateral development banks, which could unlock an estimated $600 – 800 billion in additional lending capacity across the system. Together, these moves signal strong investor appetite for financing clean energy and climate resilience across the Global South.
8. Africa sees rapid growth in affordable solar
Solar imports into the African continent have soared by 60 percent over the past year, with Nigeria emerging as the world’s second-largest importer. RMI estimates the utility-enabled solar market in Nigeria could reach up to 22 gigawatts over the next decade. Additionally, sales of pay-as-you-go solar energy kits (from lanterns to multi-light systems and small home systems) in sub-Saharan Africa jumped 54 percent to 2.35 million units, overtaking cash sales for the first time since 2018. Flexible payment plans and appliance-ready bundles are helping more customers access solar systems they couldn’t previously afford.
9. India embraces electric two-wheelers
When clean technologies are affordable to buy and cheaper to run, they’re often people’s first choice. India’s electric two-wheeler market is a case-in-point. In October alone, the country recorded its highest monthly sales of high-speed electric two wheelers ever, with nearly 144,000 of them hitting the road — a 38 percent increase over the previous month.
10. It’s now easier to track emissions thanks to new satellite and AI tools
Asset-level emissions data used to be proprietary and fragmented, but new publicly available tools are making this data more accessible than ever before. CarbonMapper now provides public satellite data on major carbon and methane super-emitters, and RMI is integrating that data into our OCI+ model to better compare emissions across global oil and gas assets, and into our and WasteMAP platform to track waste sector methane emissions. RMI also contributes crucial data on oil and gas, petrochemicals, and waste to ClimateTRACE, a free public platform that maps emissions from facilities around the world.
These new transparency tools are already helping states target the super-emitters most responsible for warming. In California, lawmakers recently strengthened rules to curb methane emissions from landfills, and Colorado is preparing a similar rule.
Read the original article at rmi.org.
Lillian Grace Mercho 