The International Energy Agency says there is “unprecedented momentum” behind renewable development. According to the agency’s new analysis, the growth of renewable energy has been “turbo-charged” as countries scramble to cope with the global energy crisis caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war. In the next five years alone, global renewable energy generation is expected to reach the amount added in the past 20 years.
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According to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable energy will account for up to 90 percent of the expansion in electricity capacity over this five-year period. By 2025, renewables are expected to replace coal as the world’s largest source of electricity.
Solar and wind make up the lion’s share of this expansion. By 2027, solar capacity will nearly triple, and wind capacity will nearly double, in part because of falling prices. New large-scale solar and onshore wind farms are now the cheapest way to generate electricity in most parts of the world.
All told, global renewable energy capacity is expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts over five years, a figure about 30 percent higher than the IEA’s forecast a year ago.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement, “Renewable energy sources are already expanding rapidly, but the global energy crisis has pushed them into a remarkable new phase of even faster growth.”
The European Union has broken records for solar and wind power generation. In the United States, Joe Biden launched an initiative to create a domestic clean energy supply chain. China also released a plan this year to bring more renewable energy online. According to the International Energy Agency, China alone is expected to account for nearly half of the world’s incremental renewable energy generation over the next five years.
With this additional solar and wind energy, the IEA says, the world still has a chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But the window for achieving that goal is rapidly closing, and the world could pass the critical 1.5-degree threshold in as little as nine years as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels continue to climb for now.
