The world’s renewable energy industry grew at its fastest pace since 1999 last year, despite the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and may have established a standard for growth in the future, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). New wind and solar power projects in China, Europe and the US spurred 45% rise in capacity last year in a step change for the global industry. The global energy watchdog also revealed that wind power capacity doubled over the last year, while solar power grew by almost 50% more than its growth before the pandemic, due to the growing appetite for clean energy.
The clean energy boom has prompted the IEA to revise its renewable energy forecasts for the coming years up by about 25% from its previous growth estimates due to the faster than expected expansion of renewables in China, Europe and the US. Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director, said governments need to “build on this promising momentum” by putting in place policies that “encourage greater investment in solar and wind, in the additional grid infrastructure they will require, and in other key renewable technologies such as hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal”. “A massive expansion of clean electricity is essential to giving the world a chance of achieving its net zero goals,” Birol added.
China remains at the heart of the renewable energy industry’s growth after accounting for more than 40% of the global growth in the market for the last few years. It is also one of the largest suppliers of the raw materials needed to make wind turbines and solar panels including silicon, glass, steel, copper and other rare earth materials. However, despite pledges by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to make his country carbon neutral by 2060, China remains the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases because of its use of coal-fired power plants to meet the country’s rising energy demand. But the IEA’s latest forecasts do not take into account the new US president, Joe Biden, whose administration is expected to spur an even faster rate of renewables growth. In the UK, the growth of the offshore wind industry is forecast to account for a quarter of the world’s offshore wind capacity by 2022, making it the only country in the world to have more wind power generated off its coast than on its land.
Last year’s renewables boom can be desribed as “unprecedented”, said Heymi Bahar, the IEA’s lead author of the report, because although it matched the rate last seen in 1999, the industry has become far larger in the last two decades. “The momentum is there from business and government,” Bahar said, noting record levels of government auctions for new renewable energy projects combined with a rising number of companies seeking to switch to renewables powered the “exceptional increase”, which is set to become “the new normal for renewable energy”.
