World’s renewable energy capacity grew by 50% in 2023, IEA says

LONDON - The world’s renewable energy capacity grew by 50 per cent in 2023 from the previous year to 510 gigawatts (GW), the International Energy Agency (IEA) said, taking overall installed capacity to 3,700 GW.

Global renewable energy capacity is on course to grow by two and a half times by 2030, according to the IEA, but governments need to go further to achieve a goal of tripling it by then as agreed at United Nations’ climate talks.

Under current policies and market conditions, it is forecast to grow to a total of 7,300 GW by 2028, but to reach the 2030 goal agreed in 2023, it will require reaching at least 11,000 GW.

World governments agreed to

triple renewable energy generation capacity by 2030

and move away from fossil fuels at the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai last December. But no mechanism was agreed to finance the shift to clean energy in developing countries.

The report said the biggest challenge to meeting the goal will be scaling up financing and deployment of renewables in most emerging and developing economies.

“In the absence of any help for African and low-income countries in Asia and Latin America, they will not be able to reach their clean energy targets. That will be a fault line in reaching the 2030 goal,” Dr Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said.

Over the past year, higher inflation and interest rates have increased equipment and financing costs of renewables projects and policies have been slow to adjust to the new macroeconomic environment.

Insufficient investment in grids is also hampering faster deployment of renewables, as well as slow and bureaucratic permitting procedures and administrative barriers.

In 2023, China had the largest growth in renewables and is expected to account for nearly 60 per cent of new renewable capacity by 2028.

China’s role is crucial in reaching the 2030 goal because it is expected to install more than half of the new capacity required globally by the end of the decade, the IEA said.

Solar photovoltaic and onshore wind additions to 2028 are also expected to more than double in the United States, the European Union, India and Brazil compared with the last five years.

Despite many announcements of green hydrogen projects – where hydrogen is produced by using renewable energy to split water and heralded as a cleaner fuel for energy intensive industry and transport – progress is slow, with only 7 per cent of current projects expected to come online by 2030, the IEA added. REUTERS