Tripling renewable energy capacity this decade—that is, going from 3,400 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 11,000 in 2030—has become a mantra of the international fight against climate change. Achieving that goal is within the reach of humanity, according to an analysis by the Ember climate change and energy think tank. This group of experts assures that at this time, the national plans that the governments of 57 countries have – which together account for 90% of the world’s energy sector – will already lead to a doubling of the installation of renewable energy in 2030, when reaching the 7,300 GW. “More than three quarters of renewable capacity in 2030 will come from solar and wind energy,” he adds. The rest will mostly be hydroelectric energy, which is not growing at the same rate as technologies that are powered by the wind and the sun to produce electricity, whose costs have plummeted.
Since the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) set this goal as one of the measures that must be taken to comply with the Paris Agreement, the objective of tripling the installed power of clean energy in the world has been assumed on the international agenda. This is what happened in the G-20 meeting in India in September or in the energy and climate mini-summit that Spain hosted in October. China and the United States also pledged last week that they will advance that goal at the annual climate summit, COP28, which begins in Dubai on the 30th and runs until December 12.
The analysis concludes that it is perfectly possible to meet the global objective of tripling global renewable energy, which does not mean that each country must triple its power, because it is not the same when starting from scratch as when a system already has a strong implementation of wind and solar. In any case, 11,000 GW of green energy is within the reach of nations at this time.
To do this, Ember points out that the world needs to increase the deployment of renewable energy by 17% each year for the remainder of the decade. “The world has already achieved this annual growth rate during the period between 2016 and 2023,” the study highlights. But analysts believe that there is still a disconnect between national plans and the speed that the sector is acquiring. “Governments must increase their ambitions and set objectives that reflect the true growth rate of the renewable energy market in their respective countries,” they explain. Because “the current boom in renewable energy is already exceeding the growth anticipated by governments.”
This group of experts points to a group of 10 countries that already have objectives that triple their capacity by 2022, among which are India and Saudi Arabia. The report places Spain among the group of 12 countries that now have a rate of implementation of renewables that, if maintained, will lead them to comfortably exceed the objective they have set for 2030. And it directly points out four countries that can perfectly intensify its targets: Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
Precisely, the United Arab Emirates is the host of this year’s climate summit, in addition to being one of the largest producers and financiers of fossil fuels. And that is the other key to this story of the transition to a world free of greenhouse gas emissions.
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To comply with the Paris Agreement and keep global warming within the safest limits possible, it is not enough to simply triple the world’s renewable power. It is also necessary, according to the IEA, to double efficiency, that is, reduce energy use. And, as the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, recalled this Monday, “a course must be charted to end fossil fuels”, that is, coal, oil and natural gas.
Guterres has stressed that, to comply with Paris, it is necessary to “root out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.” However, a recent report sponsored by the UN warned that fossil fuel-producing countries still plan to continue increasing the production of coal, oil and natural gas in the coming decades. If these projections come true, it will be impossible to comply with the Paris Agreement, whose main objective is that the increase in temperature does not exceed two degrees Celsius with respect to pre-industrial levels and, to the extent possible, 1. 5.
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