Split Transition: BRICS Breaks Renewable Records — and Fossil Records Too
By James Norman
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.
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.
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.
Global Energy Monitor