Electricity generated by wind and sunshine will supply more of the world’s electricity than gas and coal before 2026, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted in its annual report on global energy.
By then, the two forms of renewable power will produce a third of the world’s electricity, equivalent to the combined usage of China and the European Union, the report said.
From now through 2025, the globe will double its wind and solar infrastructure, adding another 1,123 gigawatts, with surges in Europe and the U.S. balancing slower progress in China, India, and the ASEAN nations, the IEA forecasts.
The additions will enable wind and solar power generating capacity, coupled with hydropower and bio-based fuels, to exceed that of natural gas in 2023 and coal’s in 2024, leaving renewable power sources as the world’s primary fuel for generating electricity before 2026.
Renewable energy will account for 95 percent of new generating capacity over the next five years, the agency said.
The shift has been accelerated by 2020’s economic shutdown, the IEA found. Millions of businesses shuttered for months, cutting power demand and utilities’ revenue, forcing them to idle or abandon the least efficient generation plants, which usually were coal-fired.
Recent rapid developments in grid-scale battery storage technologies also will speed the electricity industry’s shift from fossil fuels to renewables.
TRENDPOST: This shift, coupled with improvements in electric vehicles’ batteries and charging infrastructure, is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era. There is no greater harbinger of that transformation than the S&P 500’s decision last August to drop ExxonMobil, an index standard since 1928, and replace it with Tesla.
