REN21's Renewables 2022 Global Status Report

Context: REN21's Renewables 2022 Global Status Report (GSR 2022) sends a clear warning that the global clean energy transition is not happening, making it unlikely that the world will be able to meet critical climate goals this decade.

• For the first time in the history of UN climate summits, the COP26 declaration mentioned the need to reduce coal use, but it failed to call for targeted reductions in either coal or fossil fuels.
• For the first time, the GSR 2022 provides a world map of renewable energy shares by country and highlights progress in some of the leading countries.

Global Perspective

• Renewable energy represents 14.7% of final energy demand in buildings, supplied by renewable electricity followed by modern bio-heat.
• Share of renewables in industry and agriculture increased 4% points in a decade.
• Transport remains the sector with the lowest share of renewable energy use.
• Bioenergy provided 5.3% of total global final energy demand in 2020.
• Geothermal electricity generation totalled around 97 TWh in 2020.
• Global solar thermal market grew 3% in 2021, bringing the total global capacity to 524 GW.

Climate Disasters & Economic Threats

• China has announced plans to increase coal production by 300 million tonnes.
• US has seen a boom in new fracking and drilling projects.
• European Union has initiated measures to diversify gas imports.
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide peaked at 421 parts per million in May.
• Carbon dioxide levels are now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial times.
• Overall share of renewable energy across the globe has begun to stagnate.
• As of 2019, only Iceland, Norway and Sweden had a share of renewables in their total final energy consumption of above 50%.

India’s Performance

• India added 15.4 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power capacity in 2021.
• It is the third highest after China (136 GW) and the United States (43 GW).
• India is now third-largest market in the world for solar photovoltaics (PV) capacity.
• It ranked fourth in the world for total solar energy installations (60.4 GW) by overtaking Germany (59.2 GW) China (305.9 GW), US (121.4 GW) and Japan (78 GW).
• In the transport sector, where the renewable share went from 2.4 per cent in 2009 to 3.7 per cent in 2019, the lack of progress is particularly worrying, as the sector accounts for nearly a third of global energy consumption.

Steps Taken by India

• At Glasgow climate summit, the Prime Minister announced India’s non-fossil energy capacity to reach 500 GW by 2030.
• India will reduce its total projected carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes by 2030.
• It will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030.
• It will achieve net-zero emissions by 2070.

REN21

• It was created in 2004.
• Is the only global renewable energy community of actors from science, governments, NGOs and industry.
• Objective: To collect, and synthesise renewable energy data to provide clear and reliable information on what is happening in real-time.