The world has passed a major clean energy milestone, according to CNN reports, with 30 per cent of all electricity produced by renewables.
Climate think tank Ember says the planet is reaching a “crucial turning point” toward clean energy, with fossil fuel generation predicted to tumble from next year.
“The renewables future has arrived,” Dave Jones, the global insights director at Ember said. “Solar in particular is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible.”
Data shows that in 2000, renewables made up less than 19 per cent of the global energy mix. Now they make up more than 30 per cent.
Taking nuclear energy into account, the world generated almost 40 oer cent of its electricity from low-carbon sources last year.
Although global levels of planet-heating pollution reached a record high in 2023, the boom in renewables has pushed the electricity sector’s carbon intensity — the amount of carbon pollution produced per unit of electricity — to a record low in 2023, 12 per cent less than its 2007 peak.
The rise of renewables is also pushing fossil fuels into decline, slowing their growth by almost two-thirds over the past decade, the report found.
“The speed of solar and wind expansion is remarkable and a sign that society can bring about rapid change,” said Niklas Höhne, a climate scientist at the non-profit the NewClimate Institute.
Surprisingly, China is far and away the leader on solar, accounting for nearly 36 per cent of global generation last year.
But it’s a different story when looking at how big a role it plays in China’s national electricity mix — just 6 per cent, far below many other major solar-producing nations.
Solar makes up more than 10 per cent of annual electricity generation in 33 countries, according to the report, including Chile (30 per cent), Australia (17 per cent) and the Netherlands (17 per cent) — and California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, generates 28 per cent of its electricity from solar.
The report “does provide hope,” said Nancy Haegel, a research advisor at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who was not involved in the analysis.
“It shows that we can generate significant amounts of electricity with renewable energy.”
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