Renewable Energy Capacity Grew At Fastest Pace Ever In 2013 b4in.org/a7se The world’s collective capacity to generate renewable power grew at its fastest annual pace ever last year, the Guardian reported on Thursday. But underneath that finding, there’s also an uncertain future for green power and the world’s chances of containing global warming. The numbers, drawn from a new analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) — a Paris-based agency that pursues the goal of reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 29 member countries — show that renewables like wind and solar now produce 22 percent of the world’s electricity, and will likely rise to 26 percent by 2020. Among countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which includes the United States, much of Europe and most other developed western nations, clean energy sources made up 80 percent of new power capacity installed in 2013. And renewables have made impressive strides in the U.S. specifically. Amongst non-OECD countries, renewables were 70 percent of the growth in new capacity in 2013, “spurred by diversification needs in many countries and increasing air quality concerns in China, in particular” the report said. Africa is anticipated to add more renewable power in 2014 than it’s installed in the last 14 years combined, and a recent market outlook released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance said renewable energy could take up two-thirds of the $7.7 trillion the world will likely invest in new power plants between now and 2030. The bad news is that, beyond 2020, the IEA doesn’t think this pace will be sufficient to hit the greenhouse gas reduction targets the international community is currently haggling over. That pessimism is unfortunately backed up by another recent analysis, which found the most likely deals currently on the table won’t be able to keep the world under 2°C of temperature rise — the threshold beyond which scientists suspect climate change becomes truly dangerous. More b4in.org/a7se
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 03:02:38 +0000
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