In the next five years, renewables will grow as much as in the last twenty years.
This is reflected in the International Energy Agency’s 2022 Report, which shows how the global energy crisis is accelerating the shift to alternatives faster than expected. They will overtake coal by early 2025.
Created in 1974 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a consequence of the oil crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) was initially intended to coordinate measures to ensure the supply of oil to its member countries, as a counterweight to OPEC.
Today, following the changes in the energy markets, the IEA has become one of the world’s leading technical references on energy issues, covering the problems of energy security, economic development and environmental protection.
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For this reason, its annual report is closely followed around the world. This year, despite the global crisis unleashed by the war in Ukraine, it comes with some good news. Some language scholars will insist that in Chinese the word crisis is spelled 危机 (Wei Ji), a two-character expression. The first is Wei, meaning danger, and the second is Ji, meaning opportunity.
The examples.
The report forecasts that, globally, renewable energy capacity will double by 2027, adding as much renewable energy in the next five years as it did in the last two decades. That is, at four times the rate.
In addition, renewables are on the verge of overtaking coal as the largest source of electricity generation, which is expected to happen by early 2025.
Under the imprint of war and soaring international prices, Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, says in the report’s press release: “This is a clear example of how the current energy crisis can be a historic turning point towards a cleaner and more secure energy system”.
The magnitude of this impact is such that the IEA was forced to revise its report last year because the expansion of renewable energy over the next five years will occur much faster than was forecast in 2021.
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The report estimated that the rise in clean energy availability would be 30 percent higher than expected due to new policy decisions by some of the world’s largest emitters, such as the European Union, the United States and China.
In parallel, over the next five years, the lessons from the fragilities demonstrated by the last global energy crisis are expected to be another accelerating factor in the growth of renewables.
Even as fossil fuels soar to pre-war price levels, countries are expected to adopt low-emission technologies, including wind turbines, solar panels, a return to nuclear power and the expansion of green hydrogen, to move away from dependence on third countries for critical energy.
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The report shows that China will install almost half of the world’s new renewable energy capacity over the next five years, according to targets set out in the country’s new five-year plan. Paradoxically, the country is continuing its pace of coal mining and burning, despite announcing that it would not build any new coal-fired power plants.
