It already happened. That's the part people are missing.
European renewable energy generation from wind and solar has surpassed fossil fuels. Not as a goal, not as a projection—as a fait accompli. While everyone was arguing about whether the energy transition was feasible, Europe quietly did it.
According to Ember, the energy think tank tracking these numbers, wind and solar combined now generate more electricity across the EU than coal, oil, and gas combined. Let me repeat that: renewables have overtaken fossil fuels for electricity generation.
This isn't a one-month fluke from an unusually windy spring. This is a structural shift that's been building for years and has now crossed the threshold. Countries that were burning coal for baseload power a decade ago are now seeing days where renewable generation exceeds total demand.
Here's why this matters beyond Europe: every major argument against renewable energy deployment has centered on intermittency, cost, and grid stability. The claim was always that you couldn't run a modern industrial economy primarily on renewables without catastrophic costs or blackouts.
Europe just proved that wrong. And they did it during a period that included an energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine that was supposed to prove fossil fuels were irreplaceable.
The speed of the transition is what's remarkable. Germany is seeing solar installations that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Spain's solar capacity has exploded. Denmark and the Netherlands have built offshore wind at scale. And critically, they've done this while maintaining industrial output and grid reliability.
Yes, there are caveats. This is electricity generation, not total energy use—Europe still burns fossil fuels for heating, transportation, and industry. Energy storage and grid flexibility remain challenges. Some countries are further along than others. And gas plants still provide backup capacity during calm winter evenings.
But the milestone is real, and it represents something fundamental: the energy transition isn't a future aspiration anymore. It's happening now, and it's economically viable.
The cost curves have shifted dramatically. Solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of new electricity generation almost everywhere. Battery storage costs are falling fast enough that it's becoming economically rational to pair renewables with storage rather than build gas peaker plants. And the more renewables you build, the cheaper the marginal electricity becomes.
What does this mean for the US? We're behind. Not because the technology doesn't work here—we have better solar resources than Germany and more wind than Denmark. We're behind because of policy choices and grid infrastructure that favors incumbent energy sources.
China, meanwhile, is installing renewable capacity at a pace that makes Europe look slow. They're adding more solar annually than most countries have in total. The geopolitical implications are obvious: the countries that dominate renewable energy manufacturing and deployment will have energy independence. The ones that don't will be importing from them.
Europe hitting this milestone isn't the end of the energy transition. It's proof the transition is technically and economically viable at the scale of modern industrial economies. The question now isn't can it be done—it's how fast the rest of the world will follow.
The technology works. The economics work. The engineering works. What Europe proves is that political will and smart grid investment can overcome the arguments that have paralyzed energy policy elsewhere.
Now the question is whether everyone else gets left behind.
