Big changes don't always arrive as big news.
Sometimes they happen one solar installation, wind turbine, transmission project and policy decision at a time.
Europe's transition toward renewable electricity is a good example.
Eurostat's figures show that renewable sources represented just 15.9% of EU gross electricity consumption when its current series began in 2004.
Ten years later, the figure was 28.6%.
Another decade later, it had reached 47.5%.
Wind and hydropower still provide the majority of Europe's renewable electricity, but solar demonstrates how rapidly an individual technology can move from marginal to consequential.
In 2008, solar generated only 7.4 terawatt-hours of electricity in the EU.
By 2024, it generated 304 terawatt-hours.
That is more than forty times as much electricity in sixteen years.
None of this means Europe's energy transition is finished.
But it does illustrate something that daily news coverage can make difficult to see: infrastructure systems can change substantially when progress accumulates over long periods.
Twenty years ago, renewable electricity was clearly a minority contributor to Europe's power system.
Today, it accounts for nearly half of EU gross electricity consumption.
The transformation wasn't sudden. That's precisely why it's easy to underestimate.