How fast is the world building up solar power? The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an intergovernmental organization with 172 countries and the European Union. Its Renewable Energy Statistics is a reference dataset on how much renewable power capacity has been installed around the world. IRENA gathers the figures each year from national statistical offices, energy ministries, and industry associations, and fills gaps from official reports. The data covers almost every country from 2000 to 2025, broken down by technology: solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal, and others. The chart shows the total solar capacity installed in each country, in gigawatts. Note that the figures are cumulative: they count every panel still in operation, not only those added in a given year. The world added more than 500 gigawatts of solar in 2025 alone — more than twice all the solar capacity that existed anywhere in 2015. China alone accounts for half of the world’s cumulative total, with 1,200 gigawatts. Our principal data scientist Pablo Rosado recently updated our charts with IRENA’s July 2026 release, which adds data for 2025. In the same pass, he updated two other IRENA datasets we rely on: the cost of electricity from renewable plants, and patents in renewable energy technologies.