According to a report by independent energy think tank Ember, all renewable energy sources, including nuclear power, made up 39% of global electricity last year. The authors of the report also predicted a phasedown of gas power along with a reduction of coal-fired power, forecasting that fossil fuel generation would decline by 0.3% this year.
Ember’s annual global electricity review takes data from 78 countries which account for 93% of global electricity demand. The report showed that electricity is as clean as ever, with the share of solar power rising by 24% and wind by 17% from 2021. Solar and wind energy now make up over 10% of electricity in more than 60 countries.
The European Union (EU) gets 22% of its electricity from wind and solar power. However, EU countries seem to lag behind global wind energy expansion, logging 9% growth from wind power, which is below the global average. Ember’s Europe program lead, Sarah Brown, said, “The EU started the race to renewables early but, as the world accelerates, it cannot afford complacency.”
Last year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused concern among EU member states about declining fossil fuel imports. The European Commission put forward a plan to increase renewable energy to 45%, an increase of 5% compared to the previous year.
Despite a global gas crisis, the analysis found that gas-fired power declined by 0.2% last year due to high prices making it more unaffordable to use the fuel. Russia’s drastic cut in gas imports has prompted countries such as Germany to restart coal-powered plants and receive liquefied natural gas shipments from abroad. Meanwhile, Germany is pledging to use more renewable sources of energy and has been “a world leader” in the deployment of onshore wind, according to Ember’s report.
However, in the last five years, Germany has installed only a third of the capacity for wind power it added annually in the four years before that. The main causes are not having enough available land for construction, slow licensing procedures, and investor uncertainty. Ember’s Sarah Brown said that “the barriers preventing the rapid deployment of onshore wind power must be removed” to reach the EU’s targets by 2030.
