The global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine has “sparked unprecedented momentum” for renewable energy, according to a report by the International Energy Agency on Tuesday.
The IEA predicts that between 2022 and 2027, the world’s installed renewable energy capacity will increase by 2,400 GW, an 85% increase compared to the growth rate of the past five years. Renewable energy will overtake coal as the world’s largest source of electricity by 2025, reported that.
The five-year growth forecast for renewable energy was 30 percent higher than the IEA forecast in last year’s report, marking the group’s “largest upward revision ever,” the report said.
The shift “is a clear example of how the current energy crisis is a historic turning point towards a cleaner and safer energy system,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement. .
Rising fossil fuel prices and concerns about disruptions to energy supplies are fueling an accelerated expansion of wind, solar and other renewables, the IEA analysts wrote.
Pierpaolo Cazzola, a global fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, said renewable energy growth in Europe and elsewhere should be “robust” even as fossil fuel prices start to moderate or fluctuate.
“Even with lower fossil fuel prices, Europe will still face import demand as well as price volatility. Europe will therefore continue to have a structural interest in electrification and increasing reliance on domestically produced renewable energy,” Cazorla said in an email Say.
In the IEA’s forecast, solar and wind will account for most of the expansion of renewable energy between 2022 and 2027.
“Green” hydrogen – produced through a water-splitting process powered by renewable energy – will be the driver of expansion in wind and solar power, accounting for about 2% of growth in renewable energy capacity, the IEA said.
In most parts of the world, solar remains the most economical option for new power generation, the report said. Solar energy alone accounts for more than 60% of the projected annual expansion of renewable energy capacity over the next five years, with installations expected to overtake coal by 2027, the IEA said.
Heymi Bahar, senior renewable energy analyst at the IEA, said that in many parts of the world, permitting timetables for wind projects are lagging behind those for solar projects.
“Furthermore, society’s acceptance of wind energy is much lower compared to solar, thus complicating these investments,” Bahar said at a news conference on Thursday.
The world can further accelerate the growth of renewable energy by taking steps to expand grid infrastructure, address policy uncertainty, allow for challenges and secure financing for projects in developing countries, the report said.
At a news conference, Birol said Europe had not “fully exploited” the potential of renewable energy to replace Russian gas. Birol said the IEA would publish a list of recommendations for use by European policymakers seeking to address expected shortages of natural gas for heating in winter.
The report also predicts that growth in renewable energy generation capacity will fall short of the levels needed for the global energy sector to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The world – especially Europe – is responding to the energy crisis by adopting energy efficiency measures, according to the IEA report Latest Energy Efficiency Annual Report Released earlier this month. But the group said global investment in energy efficiency in the second five years of this decade was expected to reach about half the level needed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.
Even so, Birol said it was “too early to write the obituary of the 1.5-degree goal,” referring to the goal of limiting global average warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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