Global Solar Capacity to Hit 6 TW by 2031

Solar has crossed a threshold that would have seemed absurd a decade ago: it now generates more electricity globally than wind. Not theoretically. Not "on a trajectory to." Right now, today, as a measurable fact.

According to GlobalData's "Renewable Energy: Strategic Intelligence" report, PV generation hit 2,800 TWh in 2025 — edging past wind's 2,770 TWh. That number matters because wind has been the workhorse of the renewable transition for years. Solar didn't just catch up; it overtook it. And if GlobalData's projections hold, solar is only getting started.

The Numbers Behind the Milestone

Global renewable capacity sat at roughly 4.1 TW in 2025. By 2031, GlobalData projects that figure will reach 8.4 TW — more than doubling in six years. Solar is doing the heavy lifting: PV capacity is forecast to climb from approximately 2.5 TW to nearly 6 TW, a 13% compound annual growth rate sustained over the entire forecast window.

To put a 13% CAGR in perspective: that's the kind of growth rate you typically see in software or semiconductors, not physical infrastructure built one steel post and one panel at a time.

Solar already accounts for 56.1% of global renewable capacity. Wind, despite decades of mature deployment, holds 33.5%. Bioenergy contributes 5.3%. The hierarchy is set. The question now is how far solar pulls ahead — and who captures the opportunity.

What's Actually Driving This

Two forces are doing the real work here: cost and policy.

On cost, the story is well-documented but still striking. The price of solar modules has collapsed over the past 15 years by more than 90%. What cost $76 per watt in 2010 now costs less than $0.20 in many procurement markets. When a technology gets that cheap, it doesn't need to be the best option — it just needs to be available. And solar is available everywhere there's sunlight, which is essentially everywhere.

The policy side is more complicated. "Supportive energy transition policies" is the phrase GlobalData uses, and that's accurate as a global average. But averages can lie. China is building solar at a pace that dwarfs every other country on earth. Europe has aggressive renewable mandates baked into law. India is scaling fast. Meanwhile, the United States — which should be one of the largest growth markets — is navigating genuine policy uncertainty under the current administration.

The energy transition isn't slowing down globally. It's just redistributing who benefits.

For developers and investors watching where to deploy capital, that distinction is critical.

AI Is Becoming Infrastructure

One of the more consequential threads in GlobalData's report is the growing role of artificial intelligence — and it runs in two directions simultaneously.

On the operational side, AI is making renewable energy more reliable and more profitable. Forecasting solar generation with precision used to require expensive meteorological modeling. Now, machine learning models trained on satellite imagery, historical output data, and weather patterns can predict generation curves with enough accuracy to improve dispatch decisions, reduce curtailment, and optimize when to charge or discharge battery storage. For grid operators managing variable generation at scale, that's not a nice-to-have; it's load-bearing.

Grid coordination is the next frontier. As more distributed solar comes online — rooftop, community solar, agrivoltaic installations — the complexity of balancing supply and demand grows exponentially. AI-driven smart grid systems are the only realistic way to manage that complexity without massive over-investment in transmission infrastructure.

But here's the part of the AI story that doesn't get enough attention: data centers running AI workloads are themselves becoming one of the largest new sources of electricity demand. Hyperscale facilities are power-hungry in a way that even aggressive corporate sustainability teams struggle to offset. The same technology being deployed to optimize renewable energy systems is simultaneously creating the demand signal that justifies building more of them. That's a self-reinforcing loop — and it's one of the more interesting structural dynamics in energy markets right now.

For solar developers, this means data center campuses are increasingly viable offtakers. Long-term power purchase agreements with tech companies provide the revenue certainty that makes project financing straightforward.

Asia-Pacific Is in a Different Race

The regional breakdown from GlobalData is stark. Asia-Pacific had 1,550 GW of solar capacity installed in 2025, alongside 699.5 GW of wind. China alone generated approximately 1,150 TWh of solar electricity — roughly 41% of global PV output from a single country.

The United States generated 486 TWh. India generated 189 TWh. Both are significant. Neither is in the same category as China, which is building solar capacity at a pace the rest of the world is essentially observing from the sidelines.

India deserves particular attention as a growth story. At 189 TWh, it's already a major producer, and its trajectory is steep. The combination of abundant solar resources, aggressive government targets, and a manufacturing base that's actively scaling puts India in position to be the second most consequential solar market in the world within this forecast window.

The US story is harder to read. The country has the technical and financial capacity to be a dominant solar market. The installed base and pipeline were both growing fast. But policy changes at the federal level — including signals about weakening renewable support — introduce real uncertainty. That uncertainty doesn't necessarily kill projects; it delays them, raises financing costs, and shifts where the money goes. Developers with international flexibility are already factoring this in.

What the Path to 6 TW Actually Requires

Getting from 2.5 TW to 6 TW in six years isn't just a supply-side problem. The panels and the capital exist. The harder constraints are grid interconnection queues that stretch years into the future, permitting processes that haven't modernized at the pace of deployment ambitions, and transmission infrastructure that can't move power from where solar is abundant to where demand actually lives.

These are solvable problems — they're being solved, in different ways, in different markets. But they're the actual binding constraints on reaching that 6 TW figure, not the availability of sunlight or investor appetite.

The GlobalData forecast also carries an implicit bet on storage. Solar at 6 TW of installed capacity, generating electricity on its own production schedule, is only as valuable as the grid's ability to absorb, store, and redistribute that power. Battery storage deployment — itself accelerating rapidly — is the enabling technology that makes the high end of these projections achievable rather than theoretical.

For anyone buying, selling, or financing land and infrastructure assets in the renewable space: the market signal here is clear. The growth is real, the trajectory is durable, and the regions best positioned to capitalize are the ones that solve for permitting and grid access first. Everything else — panels, inverters, financing — is available. The bottleneck is always land and interconnection. That's where the value accrues.

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