The International Energy Agency’s Monthly Statistics report shows that in April total net electricity generation in the OECD reached 833.8 TWh. Of this total, 340.8 TWh (40.9%) was produced from fossil fuels, 352.6 TWh (42.3%) from renewable sources and 136.5 TWh (16.4%) from nuclear power. On a year-to-date basis, total net electricity production increased by 3.0% in the first four months of 2025.
Electricity generation from fossil fuels increased by 1.1% year-on-year in April 2025. From coal it increased by 6.8% y-o-y (+7.3 TWh) while from natural gas it decreased by 1.6% y-o-y (-3.4 TWh). The shares of natural gas, coal and oil as a percentage of total electricity generation were 25.6%, 13.6% and 1.1%, respectively. Similarly to trends in March, the increase in coal-fired electricity generation was driven by the OECD Americas (+16.3% y-o-y, +7.5 TWh) and Europe (10.8% y-o-y, +2.6 TWh). In contrast, generation decreased in Asia Oceania (-7.7% y-o-y, -2.8 TWh). A notable increase in the OECD Americas was observed in the United States (+22.1% y-o-y, +8.7 TWh), while in OECD Europe, Germany (+29.3% y-o-y, +1.9 TWh), Türkiye (+17.2% y-o-y, +1.0 TWh) and Netherlands (+149.9% y-o-y, +0.7 TWh) showed a significant increase. On a year-to-date basis, electricity generation from coal increased by 7.8% in the OECD (+42.4 TWh.
Generation from renewable sources increased by 1.9% year-on-year (+6.6 TWh) in April. The output from solar generation continues to increase (+27.4% y-o-y, +21.6 TWh), counter-balancing the decrease observed in wind generation (-13.2% y-o-y, -14.8 TWh). This trend was mainly driven by OECD Europe, where wind generation dropped by 25.5% y-o-y (or -13.5 TWh), driven by Germany (-4.7 TWh), the United Kingdom (-2.9 TWh) and the Netherlands (-1.8 TWh).
The high figure for Germany followed a trend whereby the cumulative wind generation from January to April decreased substantially compared to 2024 (-32.8% year-to-date, -18.8 TWh). Despite the considerable increase in solar generation compared to last year (+39.1% y-t-d, +6.7 TWh), the total renewable output was lower (-14.0% y-t-d, -13.7 TWh). This gap has been compensated by fossil-based generation, namely coal (+18.2% y-t-d, +6.6 TWh) and natural gas (+13.6 y-t-d, +4.1 TWh).
Nuclear power generation increased 3.0% year-on-year (+4.0 TWh) in the OECD in April. Nuclear power production increased in the Americas (3.8% y-o-y, +2.4 TWh) and OECD Asia Oceania (+13.2%, +2.7 TWh), while it decreased in Europe (-2.3% y-o-y, -1.1 TWh). On a year-to-date basis, OECD Asia Oceania saw the largest increase in nuclear production (+16.1%, +13.6 TWh) during the first four months of 2025.
