The world is lagging behind in adopting renewable energy sources despite massive growth — Irena

The findings were published on Thursday (July 11) in Irena’s report Renewable Energy Statistics 2024, which found that for the world to meet its target of tripling renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade – as agreed by representatives at last year’s COP28 climate conference – renewable energy deployment must now grow by 16.4% a year.

The data-driven report shows that progress towards tripling the share of renewable energy worldwide is happening slower than needed, even as renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are becoming the fastest-growing energy sources and achieving unprecedented levels of growth.

Total global onshore and offshore wind capacity rose from 903 GW in 2022 to 1,017 GW in 2023, the report said. The vast majority (944 GW) of that was onshore wind.

China alone accounts for almost half of the world’s wind power, with a capacity of almost 442 GW at the end of last year.

“The unprecedented 14 percent increase in (global) renewable capacity in 2023 sets a 10 percent compound annual growth rate (2017–2023),” the report reads.

It added: “Combined with the steady decline in non-renewable capacity additions over the years, this trend indicates that renewable energy is on track to overtake fossil fuels in global installed capacity.”

Yet this progress still falls short of what is needed for the world to triple its renewable energy generating capacity by 2030.

The report shows that if the current rate of annual growth in renewable capacity were to continue, the world would still be far from the target of tripling generation capacity to 11.2 TW, as previously outlined by Irena, and would fall 1.5 TW (13.5%) short of achieving this target, reaching only 9.7 TW.

According to Irena, if the global annual growth rate of renewable energy remains at 10% until the end of the decade, production capacity will be even lower and will reach 7.5 TW by 2030, i.e. almost one third lower than the assumed target.

Solar power was the largest source of renewable energy in 2023, accounting for 36.7% (1.42 TW), followed by hydropower with 32.7% (1.26 TW) and wind power with 26.3% (1.02 TW).

“The share of variable renewable energy sources (wind and solar) increased to 63% of renewable capacity, indicating a shift towards these more volatile energy sources,” reads the report’s executive summary.