According to Energy UK, the trade association for the UK energy industry, 2025 was the cleanest year on record for UK electricity generation, with renewables generating a record 44% of the UK’s electricity – providing more power than fossil fuels and with zero use of coal for the first year ever.

Of these, wind was the largest source at 30%, followed by solar at 6.5%. Gas represented the UK’s second largest source of electricity at 26.8%, followed by nuclear at 14%.

2026 saw a further increase, with the UK generating more than 53% of its electricity from renewables in Q1 – reaching a new record of 43.7 TWh. Overall, low carbon sources of electricity generation delivered more than 63% of the total.

Similar trends have been observed in the EU and elsewhere.

Despite progress, the energy-generation sector is still the largest CO2 emitter

Despite this notable progress, the energy generation sector remains the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). According to the World Nuclear Association, energy-related greenhouse gas emissions account for the majority of human-related emissions – about 80% in the USA and the European Union. In fact, global electricity generation from fossil fuels has grown 30-40% since 2005, as global electricity demand has outpaced the clean energy transition.

The World Energy Institute backs that up estimating that global energy generation accounted for 76.7% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023. In the UK alone, power stations emitted around 50 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023, accounting for around 14% of all UK CO2 emissions.

There are also secondary effects, such as poor air quality leading to human health issues, as well as the challenges of waste removal and long-term storage of CO₂.

Of course, CO₂ emissions vary significantly between regions and countries. Our World in Data, for example, has published a list of global lifecycle carbon intensity for electricity emitters in 2025 (measured in grams of carbon dioxide-equivalents emitted per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated).

The data covers both regional averages and specific countries – and reveals considerable variation. For example, in the EU, France has the lowest level of carbon intensity at 41g, while Poland is recorded with a value of 589g, against an EU-wide average of 210g.

Naturally, this data reflects historic investments in sources such as nuclear power, as well as legacy dependency on generation from more carbon intensive sources.

Renewables supporting the electrification of the Power and Energy sector

Moving to renewable energy supplies is, though, only part of the problem. Electrification in general is a significant consideration, particularly for heavy industry.

The steady electrification of key emitting industries is being supported by renewables, as they become more reliable, with better storage technologies being introduced, and at lower cost than just a decade ago. But this transition is not just a case of replacing fossil fuels with electricity from renewables and will require a systemic change in strategy embracing a mix of power and energy technologies.

Achieving the super-high temperatures required for heavy industry processes, for example, demands a massive, steady, and constant supply of heat (over 1,000C in many cases). This poses a significant challenge for renewables-based electrification making it hard to achieve and expensive.

Similarly, while storage will likely become a viable long-term option, operations that are remote from infrastructure to collect and route CO2 to appropriate facilities will face a significant challenge over the next decades.

All of which means that, until those challenges are solved, fossil fuels are likely to be consumed for some time, particularly in countries such as India and China (although the latter is showing impressive progress towards developing its renewables sector).

DNV (Det Norske Veritas) is a global independent energy expert and advisory services provider to the power and renewable energy sectors. It paints a picture of what the fuel mix of the energy and power sector might look like in 2050–2060 – and considers the likely long-term use of fossil fuels in sectors that are hard to convert to electricity generated from renewable sources.

DNV forecasts that global electricity demand is growing rapidly…but so too is greening. Their experts predict a more than doubling in demand (120%) between now and 2060, meaning that the need for electricity will grow from a 21% share of global energy demand to 43%. Heavy industry, manufacturing, buildings and infrastructure, and transport, maritime, and more will drive demand throughout all regions.

Renewables building but fossil fuels will remain in the mix beyond 2050

The good news is that DNV predicts that fossil fuel demand for energy to generate power and create the steel and other products to build more infrastructure will decline significantly, forecasting a drop in the share of electricity supply from fossil fuels from 59% to just 4% between 2025 and 2060.

At the same time, solar PV accounts for 10% of all power generation today – led by China (47% of installed capacity) and Europe (20%) – but DNV predicts global solar capacity to grow to 20% of total power generation in 2029 and 40% by 2045 – and will go on to overtake the power generated by offshore and onshore wind by 2060.

Taken together, it means renewables are expected to supply most of the growing global electricity demand, but fossil-fired plants will still be in the supply mix past 2060.

Of course, hard-decarbonise industries and laggard countries are likely to be the main culprits. And that is why we need to target abatement efforts to those sectors that have the greatest dependency on fossil fuels. Specifically, while there are approaches that may deliver in time, we must also consider the maturity of the method proposed.

In this context carbon storage (CCS) at real scale offers considerable promise but lacks maturity for global deployment. Instead, other approaches can complement CCS and play a key part in both accelerating near-term decarbonisation.

CCU, for example, can already provide industrial scale capabilities. What’s more, it can also be adopted for sites that cannot easily be connected to storage facilities, because some CCU technologies can be deployed on site, removing the need for transportation of the CO₂ emissions to a remote storage centre.

As energy producers look for cost-effective solutions to meet their carbon abatement programs and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, new CCU solutions such as algal photosynthesis are offering a scalable, cost-effective, and proven option, as well as new revenue streams from the conversion of captured CO2.

Would you like to know how Remediiate can help you – today? Get in touch with our team and learn how our unique, scalable and TRL8-ready solution can support your decarbonisation goals.