Recently, the Renewable Energy Policy Network released Renewables 2014, a report that tracked the growth of the sector in 2013. The report is prepared by a mix of academics, government officials, members of NGOs, and industry groups; given the latter, there's almost certainly an element of cheerleading in the analysis. But on some level, the numbers speak for themselves: by the end of 2013, renewables accounted for over 20 percent of the global electricity production, with wind and photovoltaics having reached 3.6 percent of the total.

Globally, renewables accounted for over half the new generating capacity installed last year. The total cumulative capacity reached 1.56 terawatts, which is up by over eight percent in the last year. Hydropower provided roughly one terawatt of that, and it grew by roughly 12 percent in the last year. In contrast, all the other sources of renewables grew at a collective 17 percent. Wind grew by 12 percent, while photovoltaic capacity went up by 27 percent. That represents the first time that solar power has outpaced wind.

The rise continues at a torrid pace for solar growth; the average increase over the last five years is more than 50 percent. Perhaps more impressively, however, 2013's growth came despite a drop of 22 percent in total investments. In other words, the price of photovoltaics came down so much that end users were able to get much more capacity for significantly less money.

Germany remained the largest user of photovoltaics, with about 35 gigawatts of total capacity. But the big story was China, which installed nearly 12GW last year alone, enough to move from fifth to second on place in the capacity race. Post-Fukushima, Japan saw the second largest increase of any country, placing it fourth behind Italy (the US is in fifth).

All that growth brought global photovoltaic capacity to 138GW (concentrated solar added another 3.5GW). In contrast, the cheaper and more mature wind market is already at 318GW. Again, the story is China. Already out front with about 75GW installed, it added another 16GW in 2013—more than the remainder of the top 10 wind nations combined and more than the total installed capacity of the sixth-place nation, the United Kingdom. The US, Germany, and Spain are also major users of wind, and India saw healthy growth to round out the top five users of wind power.

It's important to keep these figures in perspective. Biomass (mostly burning of wood for cooking and heating) still provides almost as much energy as all the modern renewables combined. And solar water heaters provide 325GW of capacity as of last year, more than wind provides. Still, the astonishing growth of non-hydro renewables, including the staggering performance of China, has taken them from a rounding error to a significant fraction of global energy production in less than a decade.