With renewable energy sources ramping fast, it is no surprise that even the generally conservative International Energy Agency believes that solar, wind and the likes will the primary electricity source globally by 2030.
As Climate Progress reported :
In November, the International Energy Agency quietly dropped this bombshell projection: “Driven by continued policy support, renewables account for half of additional global generation, overtaking coal around 2030 to become the largest power source.”
(…) The IEA notes, “With 60 cents of every dollar invested in new power plants to 2040 spent on renewable energy technologies, global renewables-based electricity generation increases by some 8,300 TeraWatt-hours (more than half of the increase in total generation).” That increase is “equivalent to the output of all of today’s fossil-fuel generation plants in China, the United States and the European Union combined.” It represents new investment of some $7 trillion in renewables over the next quarter century.
Significantly, this remarkable projection about the future of electricity is simply what the IEA believes is now going to happen given the pledges made in Paris by the world’s leading countries to rapidly expand renewable energy investment while restraining and, in many cases, reducing carbon pollution from fossil fuels through 2030. This is IEA’s “central scenario,” and in it the planet still warms 2.7°C by 2100 and more after that.
In short, this projection is not what would happen if the nations of world pursued the kind of aggressive policies they unanimously agreed to in Paris to avoid very dangerous warming and stay below total warming of 2°C. That would effectively end fossil fuel emissions by 2100.
The whole article, as always with Climate Progress, is well worth your time. The Executive Summary of the World Energy Outlook 2015 is also a good read. The future is bright for renewables as they are merely getting started. I will publish more about that very soon so stay tuned !
Image credits : IEA, Flickr.
This is a great look of the future. Thank you for this post, we got the chance of taking a glimpse of the coming technologies.
Pingback: Why Al Gore Is Optimistic About Our Climate Change Efforts - Kindling
Nice and informative article. More practice, less preaching- This is what the world needs right now. More clean and renewable energy sources must be installed if the IEA wishes to achieve its target.