Weekly Blog - 18 June 2026 - Clean Energy Records
The world can seem a hard and unpredictable place right now. Ben Niblett finds some cheerful, record-breaking news.
Wind
We urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to clean energy instead – and we are. March saw a new GB wind power record, 23.88 megawatts of electricity generated from wind (between 1.30 and 2.00pm on 25th March). As we keep building more wind farms, every year sets new records, and this beats 23.82 from last December. 8 of the top 10 GB wind power records were set in 2026, so far, and we expect to get more when winter arrives.
Solar
April followed suit with a new solar power record. Britain is one of the best places for wind power in the world, with lots of wind and shallow seas where deploying giant wind turbines is easy. We’re not the sunniest place in the world but we’re still getting good value from adding lots of solar. This record was 15.4 megawatts, (between 1.00 and 1.30pm on 23rd April). This beat 2025’s record from July, which was the first time British solar reached 14 megawatts; it’s growing quickly as solar is the cheapest and fastest way to build new electricity generation.
These records are from Energy Dashboard which also shows nice visualisations of the GB grid as electricity flows around.
Cars
That extra clean electricity is powering record numbers of electric cars. March broke the record for the most electric car sales in a month, with 86,000. In April the 2 millionth electric car drove onto the UK’s roads, and more than a quarter of new cars were electric. This is very good news as – now we’ve come a long way in cleaning up our electricity – transport is the biggest part of our emissions, and cars are the biggest part of that.
The other big change this spring is that electric cars got cheaper than petrol cars, according to Autotrader who looked at the average prices of all the new cars they sold. They’ve been cheaper to drive for a long time, as electricity is cheaper than petrol, at least if you can charge your car at home or at work; and electric cars are much cheaper to maintain without engines or clutches. But once they’re cheaper to buy, that is the tipping point where the transition from engines to batteries will accelerate. High petrol prices because of the US and Israel’s conflict with Iran are also driving up interest in buying electric, said Autotrader.
More wind and solar
We’re seeing new clean power records worldwide too. Last year more electricity came from renewables than from coal for the first time ever, mainly because of record amounts of solar being built, according to a report from Ember. A 30% increase on the year before is good going.
More than half of that new solar was in China. China has built more than half of the new global wind capacity. It has been the largest builder of new wind capacity every year for many years now (although it is also still the world’s biggest emitter of CO2). India added much more than ever before. Pakistan is a more surprising growth story as most of their new solar has been households and businesses finding that solar panels and batteries are now cheap enough for them to afford, and save money on diesel for generators or buying power from the unreliable grid. Brazil, South Africa and Nigeria also added lots of solar last year, joining the likes of Australia and the Netherlands who have been near the top of the table for much longer. It’s good to see the new green and fair economy we call for in the Arise Manifesto taking shape like this.
There’s so much more to be done, very urgently now, but the actions we’re taking seriously are working. Let’s pray for the transition away from fossil fuels to get faster and fairer; some encouraging verses to go with these encouraging pieces of news are Matthew 7:7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” Let’s be encouraged to ask for more.
Find out more
Arise Manifesto – Find out more about how the transition to clean renewable energy is an essential part of our mission as Christians in the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world.
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