Renewables could match coal as top power source within five years: IEA
Ousting coal from the top position, renewables are set to be the world’s largest source of electricity mix by 2024, according to the International Energy Agency’s Carbon Brief’ 2019 report.
The Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on the IEA’s “accelerated case” scenario which shows the combined capacity of hydro, wind, solar and biomass by more than 60 percent over the next five years. In this case, renewable capacity would increase by more than 60% to 4,036GW in 2024, adding 1,535GW in five years, equivalent to the current total fleets of the US and Japan.
Even in its “base case”, pace of renewables growth have historically been underestimated IEA forecasts renewable capacity to expand by nearly 50 percent. Within the base case total, wind and solar capacity would nearly double, contributing around 85 percent of the increase for all renewables, with hydro accounting for another tenth and bioenergy 4 percent.
This would mean global hydro, wind, solar and biomass capacity rising from 2,501 gigawatts (GW) in 2018 to 3,721GW in 2024. The increase of 1,220GW means the world would be building renewable capacity equal to the entire US electricity system today, says the IEA.
IEA executive director, Fatih Birol, says the “falling costs and technologies of solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind are at the heart of transformations taking place across the global energy system”.
In a series of auctions tracked by the IEA, the cost of solar has fallen from US$160 per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2014 to an average of US$17/MWh for projects due to start operating in 2023, while for onshore wind the costs have fallen from US$65/MWh in 2014 to US$30/MWh for 2023.
The IEA forecast is based on detailed bottom-up analysis of the market, policy and electricity system outlook in each of 41 individual countries and every world region.
Capacity growth is expected to be concentrated in just a handful of regions, the IEA says, with 40 percent in China, 17 percent in Europe, 11 percent in the US and 9 percent in India. Together, these account for four-fifths of the global increase in the IEA’s base case.
The pace of expansion in renewable capacity has already dented the prospects of fossil-fueled sources of electricity in many countries, eating into their market share and changing the way wholesale prices vary across days, months and seasons.
Nevertheless, the growth of global electricity demand has been such that generation from fossil-fuel sources has continued to rise, increasing the sector’s contribution to CO2 emissions. Moreover, coal has comfortably maintained its position as the world’s largest source of electricity.
Dr Birol says in a press release: “Renewables are already the world’s second largest source of electricity, but their deployment still needs to accelerate if we are to achieve long-term climate, air quality and energy access goals.”
Since 2010, global supplies of renewable electricity have expanded by 60 perent, adding enough output to power half the US economy. Yet this growth was only sufficient to cover half of the increase in global electricity demand, with the other half coming from a roughly equal split of coal and gas.
