Renewable energy: more needed
The share of renewables for generation of electricity is expected to reach 30 % by 2024. But electricity makes up just 18% of total world energy. Most of the other 82% is heat and transportation.
Renewable energy is on the rise but still makes up a small share of the TOTAL global energy consumption - about 4 %.
So we need to see a huge boost in renewables for heat and transportation as well if we are serious about a green transformation of the global energy system.
Big investments in renewable energy
Green energy investments now exceed fossil fuels investments. In 2018, 272 billion USD was invested in renewable energy (excluding hydro) while 95 billion USD was invested in fossil fuels.
2.6 trillion USD was invested globally in new renewable energy capacity in the period 2010 to 2019.
But subsidies for fossil fuels still huge
USD$5.2 trillion was spent globally on fossil fuel subsidies in 2017. That is a whopping 6.3 percent of global GDP.
Future scenarios: Not good enough
Across a large number of energy scenarios and outlooks to 2040, the share of fossil fuels does not get below 70% in any “plausible scenario” (from today’s 80%). As global energy consumption will increase massively in the coming decades, such a development is very far from solving the global challenge of climate change.
Energy forecasts and climate change: Not good enough. Not even close.
None of The World Energy Council’s scenarios meets the 2°C limit for temperature increases. Also, even in the optimistic “normative” sceneries, the share of renewable energy will not reach 50 % by 2040. This is alarming. Even in a “best case” situation, less than half of the world’s energy will come from green, renewable sources. BIG changes are needed to move the world away from its heavy dependence on coal and oil.
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Global electricity generation still relies heavily on coal
The global generation of electricity from coal is expected to continue growing until 2026 and not return to below 2012 levels before another 10 years in 2036.
What is renewable energy?
Main renewable energy sources include hydropower, wind, solar power, geothermal heating and possibly biomass heating. It’s highly debatable whether energy from biomass is really green though as it depends on resources from Earth as opposed to for example wind and solar.
The generation of electricity from renewable sources will grow 50% between 2019 and 2024. Most of the increase will come from solar power (around 60 %) and wind-power (around 30%).
The good news: Huge untapped potential
There is an enormous, but unrealized, potential powering the world through green renewables.
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On the positive side, the cost of wind and solar power has decreased a lot in the past years. So much that it’s now cheaper to get additional energy capacity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels.
“Wind and solar are now cheapest across more than two-thirds of the world”.
- Bloomberg, New Energy Outlook 2019.
The problem is that already installed capacity based on fossil fuels will remain operational for many years. And the fact that fossil fuels still receive huge amounts of subsidies.
