The global scoreboard, updated
The International Renewable Energy Agency has released its Renewable Energy Statistics 2026, and the headline numbers mark a structural shift. Renewables supplied 31.7% of global electricity generation in 2024 — 9,836 TWh — after growing 9.8% year on year, the fastest rate ever recorded. Solar did the heavy lifting: its generation rose 29.7% year on year to roughly 2,106 TWh. Source: PV Tech.
Solar takes the top spot
The capacity table tells the bigger story. With 2,396.7 GW in operation in 2025, solar is now the largest renewable technology in the world by installed capacity — ahead of hydropower at 1,295.8 GW and wind at 1,291 GW. A decade ago solar was a distant third; today it is nearly as large as hydro and wind combined. Total renewable capacity reached 5.2 TW at the end of 2025, which IRENA says is 49.5% of all generation capacity on Earth — renewables are about to become the majority of the world's power fleet.
The statistic behind the statistic
Every one of those 2,397 solar gigawatts is physically standing on a mounting structure. At typical structural weights, the global solar fleet represents tens of millions of tonnes of engineered steel and aluminum — rooftop rails, ground-mount frames, tracker rows and fasteners — and the fleet is compounding at double-digit rates. For the supply chain, IRENA's growth curve is a demand curve: structure volume scales one-for-one with the capacity the world adds.
Growth is broadening, not just deepening
The 2024 growth was not confined to China, Europe and the US. Emerging markets across the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America are adding utility-scale and distributed capacity from a small base, which means new grids, new climates and new load conditions. A rooftop system specified for German snow is not the right answer for Gulf heat or coastal typhoon zones — buyers everywhere benefit from structures engineered to the local wind, snow, seismic and corrosion basis rather than a generic export spec.
The takeaway
Solar's rise to the top of the global capacity table confirms what procurement teams already feel: mounting structures are now one of the largest steel product categories in the energy transition. Wherever your next project is, send Apex the location, application, module format and load basis — the engineering team will prepare a documented structure package, and every product datasheet is available for download for evaluation.
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