Global Green Energy Capacity Surpasses a Trillion Watts

Global wind and solar developers took 40 years to install their first trillion watts of power generation capacity while the next trillion could be finished within the next five years.

That’s the conclusion of research by Bloomberg NEF, which estimated the industry reached the 1-terawatt milestone sometime in the first half of the year. That is almost as much generation capacity as the entire U.S. power fleet, although renewables work less often than traditional coal and nuclear plants and therefore yield less electricity over time.

The findings illustrate the scale of the green energy boom, which has drawn ...