Fossil fuels fell from all to two-thirds of UAE power
Share of electricity generated from fossil fuels, 2015 and 2025, Gulf states with 2025 data, Ember.
- 1. China now uses more electricity per person than the EU
- 2. Solar now makes more of Brazil's power than fossil fuels
- 3. Rooftop solar now outsizes coal on Australia's main grid
- 4. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
- 5. France swung from power importer to record exporter
- 6. Over a quarter of China's new heavy trucks are electric
- 7. More than two in three cars Nepal imports are electric
- 8. The US now ships a quarter of the world's LNG
- 9. Kazakhstan mines more uranium than Canada and Namibia combined
- 10. Indonesia now mines two-thirds of the world's nickel
- 11. India had 27 million ACs for 1.3 billion people
- 12. Sun and wind now beat fossil fuels in Chile
- 13. Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
- 14. Argentina mined 60% more lithium in just one year
- 15. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
- 16. Only 16 countries are building new coal power plants
- 17. Egypt's sun and wind now outproduce its Nile dams
- 18. The price of lithium fell 86% in three years
- 19. Pakistan now gets more power from solar than from coal
- 20. Oil now makes less than a third of Saudi power
- 21. The Philippines is building more solar than it already runs
- 22. Nine in ten Indonesians now cook with clean fuels
- 23. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
- 24. India's sun and wind now outproduce Germany's
- 25. Solar now beats coal in 25 of 81 coal-burning countries
- 26. Indonesia climbed from ninth to second among cobalt miners
- 27. Fossil fuels fell from all to two-thirds of UAE power
- 28. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
Share of UAE electricity from fossil fuels in 2025, down from 99.8% in 2015, when all of it was gas.
Share from the Barakah nuclear plant, from zero before 2020. Solar added 9.9%.
Fossil share in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 2025: the UAE is the first Gulf state to break from all-hydrocarbon power.
the numbers & method
| 2015 (%) | 2025 (%) | |
|---|---|---|
| United Arab Emirates | 99.8 | 68.4 |
| Kuwait | 100.0 | 97.7 |
| Saudi Arabia | 100.0 | 95.8 |
| Oman | 100.0 | 94.8 |
Claim types Fact · Interpretation
Ember yearly electricity data (vault edition 8938c2f576), share of electricity generation by source, read through the progrss data vault; the UAE headline (68% fossil, 32% clean) matches Ember's UAE country page (ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/united-arab-emirates/). Fossil share, 2015 → 2025: UAE 99.76 → 68.42 (gas 99.76 → 68.04, nuclear 0 → 21.18, solar 0.24 → 9.87); Saudi Arabia 99.99 → 95.81; Oman 100.00 → 94.80; Kuwait 99.98 → 97.66. UAE path: 97.4 (2019), 95.0 (2020), 89.1 (2021), 81.8 (2022), 71.5 (2023), 69.7 (2024), 68.4 (2025), as Barakah's four reactors came online from 2020. Qatar (95.98) and Bahrain (99.74) have data only to 2024 and are not charted. 'All' rounds 99.76% (the rest was solar) and 'two-thirds' rounds 68.4%. Nuclear's share peaked at 21.76% in 2024; the fall in fossil share has slowed since 2023 (71.5 → 69.7 → 68.4). Takeaway 3's reading is an interpretation. Licence: Ember, CC BY 4.0.
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