REN21’s roots trace back to the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit (World Summit on Sustainable Development). How the world – and energy politics – have changed since then!
The EU’s stated position on energy at the summit was among the more progressive, calling for: “affordable and clean energy to eradicate poverty, improve energy efficiency and increase the share of renewable energy sources.”
But NGOs such as Greenpeace and WWF wanted more than ambitions, they wanted targets and time frames to ensure accountability. Some of their demands were:
- Launch a massive uptake of renewable energy worldwide by having governments agree to a global target of 10% new renewable energy by 2010.
- Give access within 10 years to affordable, clean, renewable energy to the 2 billion people that currently have no access to modern energy services.
- Eliminate the USD 250-300 billion subsidies received each year by the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors.
Only a handful of governments, Brazil chief among them, supported the 10% new renewable energy target which was proposed at the Summit. The effort derailed largely due to debates around defining what constituted renewable energy, and was ultimately killed by the OPEC countries.
21 years later, the consensus reached at COP28 in Dubai calls on Parties to peak global emissions by 2025, transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable capacity and double energy efficiency globally by 2030. Not only was the renewables target adopted, it wasn’t even the most contentious energy issue on the agenda – that privilege was reserved for the call to transition out of fossil fuels. Ironically the COP that explicitly signalled the end of the fossil fuel era was chaired by the head of a national oil company.
So what happened over the last two decades? Has enough happened? And where we’ve been successful, what accounts for that success?
The bad news
Energy Access is the first step in the path towards a sustainable energy system, and the lack of progress is shocking. 760 million people in 113 countries are without electricity in 2022. Only 25 of those countries have set targets for universal access to electricity before 2030. Three billion people are still without access to clean cooking technologies.
Looking at progress on renewables, we must start with the obligatory reminder that renewable energy is not the same as renewable electricity. While the latter gets all the attention – yay wind! yay solar! – the share of renewables in total final energy consumption is still abysmally low – only 12.7% in total final energy consumption. After all, very few cars, planes or boats run on renewables and many industrial processes still rely on fossil fuels.
This also means that the world is still massively running on fossil fuel. And given the increase in global energy demand, we are consuming more fossil fuels than ever before. This is just part of the bad news.
Are renewables spreading to more countries? When it comes to the number of countries producing more than 30% of their Total Final Energy Consumption from renewables, we’ve seen an increase from 26 in 2004 to 35 nations in 2020. There is indeed still a long way to go.
It has taken 15 years (2007-2022) to triple renewables power capacity. We now need to achieve another tripling in six years.
And then there are fossil fuel subsidies.
In 2009, at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, leaders committed to “phase out and rationalise over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest.” But rather than shrinking, subsidies grew through 2012 before declining over the following five years. In 2022, global subsidies for fossil fuel use surpassed USD 1 trillion, the highest annual value ever recorded. This was largely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent reduction of Russian gas supplied to Europe. Even in 2021, however, fossil fuel subsidies increased dramatically, nearly doubling in the major economies over 2020 levels.
The better news
So much for the bad news. If you’re looking for good news about the energy transition, hands-down it’s the story of renewable power, and more specifically, the story of solar PV and wind.
Renewables went from representing 18.4% of total electricity generation in 2004 to 30% in 2022. But the most revolutionary development is happening on the wind and solar front: in 2004 they represented only 2.8% of all renewable power generation, surpassing 40% in 2022. For 2024 it is even projected that solar and wind will produce more electricity than hydropower, the historic leading renewable technology, which represented a whopping 89% of renewable electricity generation in 2004.
Global additions to renewable power capacity in 2023 increased by an estimated 50% over 2022, reaching approximately 510 gigawatts (GW). It was a new record. For the 22nd consecutive year.
Much of the growth has been seen in China, where the percentage of total renewable installed capacity has increased from 12% in 2004 to 34% in 2022, while both the US and EU have actually declined 1% and 2% in the same period. China’s compound capacity annual growth rate is 14% compared to 7.5% for the US, 7.1% for the EU, and a global average of 7.9%.
Decrease in Costs
Costs have plummeted over the last two decades and the market, thanks in large part to enabling policies put in place by governments, has been doing its job. It’s worth recalling something Sir Mark Moody-Stewart, former Chairman of Shell said at the Johannesburg Summit:
“It is entirely practical and commercial to supply this energy. There would be a cost – it would cost perhaps 3% more if you had a program which really promoted renewable energy than business as usual but in 10 years it would be much cheaper.”
He was so right. Sometime around 2010, when wind and solar started taking off, costs began to decrease dramatically. By 2015, renewables surpassed fossil fuels for the first time as the investment of choice for adding new capacity. Today, it is cheaper in many places to build new solar and wind installations than it is to run existing coal-fired power plants.
In 2010, the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of onshore wind was 95% higher than that of the lowest fossil fuel-fired plant. And solar PV was 710% more expensive! But as of 2022, the cost of both technologies are lower than fossil fuel solutions (52% and 29% respectively). Today, moving to renewables makes economic sense.
Increase in Jobs
Renewable energy jobs more than tripled from 2004 to 2014 (REN21’s first decade) and the number continues to grow rapidly, with solar PV being the largest employer.
What history teaches us: policy is key!
So what lessons can we learn from two decades of promoting renewables? If the success in ramping up power generation tells us anything, it’s that these things don’t happen by accident. They require policies that make renewables attractive to customers, communities, and businesses. Markets need to be developed, costs need to come down, and industrial opportunities found.
In 2004, only 45 countries had a renewable energy target of any kind. By 2022, that number stood at 174. But we all know that a target is not enough. Regulatory policies in the power sector have been growing in the last two decades, trending up from 41 countries in 2004 to 156 in 2021. When we look at the policy attention that has been applied to the heating, cooling and transport sectors, it’s clear why there’s a discrepancy between progress in renewable power and other forms of renewable energy. In 2021, renewable energy policies existed for transport in just 70 countries, and for heating and cooling, only 26. That’s both appalling, and an indicator of vast neglected potential carbon savings.
All of the elements that we’ve so successfully applied to power generation now have to be applied to the 80% of energy use that isn’t power generation. Electrification is key, but not enough. From heating residential buildings, to industrial processes, to shipping, to creating resilient cities and enhancing energy access, renewable heat and fuels are essential. We need to extend the renewables revolution far beyond power generation and into every sector possible. We need policy to make this happen.
It’s worth remembering that renewables back in 2002 were called “Alternative Energy.” The shift in vocabulary alone is telling. But while it’s heartening to see the progress we’ve made in twenty years, the crucial question is what we do in the next six.
What counts as renewable energy?
The problem of apples and oranges: direct comparisons of numbers are complicated because of changing definitions over the years.
Take energy access for example – “access to modern energy services” is now generally quantified separately as access to electricity and access to clean cooking fuels.
And then there’s biomass. In the first GSR report from 2004, traditional biomass (e.g. wood, dung) was counted as renewable energy but later definitions included only modern bioenergy (e.g. from agricultural and forest residues and solid waste).
Likewise, large scale hydropower has often been excluded from renewable energy calculations given the significant environmental and social impacts from dam construction. The GSR only included large hydropower starting in 2011.
Definitions of fossil fuel subsidies have also changed over the years, and are counted separately from nuclear subsidies. The IMF defines explicit subsidies as undercharging for supply costs (about 18 % of fossil fuel subsidies in 2022) and implicit subsidies as undercharging for environmental costs and forgone consumption taxes (around 82 % of the total). Distinctions are also made between production subsidies which encourage increased exploration and development, versus consumption subsidies which offset costs for the poor or economic sectors which are heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
And new questions arise. There are currently debates about whether heat pumps should be counted under energy efficiency or renewables.
This is one in a series of stories we will be telling in 2024 to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of REN21. Got an anecdote, a picture, a memory, a story you’d like to share? Know a colleague who does? We would welcome hearing from you: community@ren21.net
