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A new report has found that for the first time 30% of electricity produced worldwide came from renewable energy sources, predominantly solar and wind.
UK climate think tank Ember has published a report – Global Electricity Review 2024 – that analysed electricity data from 215 countries, as well as examining data from the highest carbon emitting countries and regions of the world.
It finds that renewables generated a record 30% of global electricity in 2023. From the analysis, 2023 saw a 23% growth in solar generation, 10% growth in wind generation and only a 0.8% growth in fossil generation.
“The renewables future has arrived. Solar, in particular, is accelerating faster than anyone thought possible,” said Dave Jones, Ember’s director of global insights.
This surge in renewables has led to a slowing down in carbon emissions. Indeed, a separate report published in March 2024 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that while global energy-related carbon emissions reached a record level in 2023, the rise was lower than 2022’s rise.
The Ember report found that the energy-related emissions in 2023 would have been significantly smaller if it hadn’t been for the low hydropower output caused by extreme droughts in China, the US and several other economies. This shortfall in output was met in large part by coal, which resulted in over 40% of the rise in global CO2 emissions in 2023.
In 2023, solar led the way in electricity generation, and surpassed wind to become the largest source of new electricity for the second year running. Indeed, solar added more than twice as much new electricity as coal in 2023. China added as much solar PV capacity in 2023 than the entire world did in 2022.
The Ember report forecasts that fossil generation will fall slightly in 2024, leading to larger falls in subsequent years. This will mark 2023 as the likely peak of power sector emissions.
According to its analysis, demand growth in 2024 is expected to be higher than in 2023 (+968 TWh) but clean generation growth is forecast to be even greater (+1300 TWh), leading to a 2% fall in global fossil generation (-333 TWh).
“The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable. 2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector, a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falling depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues,” said Jones.
The pace of emissions declines will be shaped by how quickly new clean power technologies come online and fossil generation decreases.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) held in Dubai during December 2023, it was decided that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C the G7 group of industrialised nations – consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – must phase out coal by 2030 and fully decarbonise electricity by 2035.
In April 2024, energy and climate ministers from the G7 met in Turin, where a deal is being agreed to phase out the use of coal power “in the first half of the 2030s” where the emissions have not been captured.
Also in April 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it had finalised a suite of rules to reduce pollution from fossil fuel-fired power plants in a bid “to protect public health, advance environmental justice and confront the climate crisis”.
As well as reducing fossil fuel generation, the Ember report urges countries to focus on ramping up renewable energy generation and preparing the way for a clean, electrified economy.
“There’s an unprecedented opportunity for countries that choose to be at the forefront of the clean energy future. Expanding clean electricity not only helps to decarbonise the power sector, it also provides the step up in supply needed to electrify the whole economy – and that’s the real game-changer for the climate,” concluded Jones.
