The Future of Renewable Energy 

Renewable Energies play a crucial role in designing a sustainable future. As a clean energy source, renewables are essential to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. With these green energy sources, we can increase a community´s economic development and local energy independence. ¹ The last decades have shown an increase in energy consumption and a rise in renewable energy production. However, it´s still a long way to decarbonize our economy. In this blog post, I want to get close to answering the question: What determines the future of renewable energy?

What is a renewable energy source?

The most common renewable energy sources are biomass, solar-, wind-, geothermal-, and hydropower. ¹ There are also other renewables, such as wave power, but the ones I named are the most predominant ones on a global scale. Renewable indicates that energy source is not exhaustible. Thus, you can gain energy from renewables without reaching a resource-related limit. Compared to fossil fuels, renewable energies do not exploit natural resources.

Current State of Renewable Energy

In today’s society, we use a range of energy sources. The most dominant ones are fossil fuels, such as such as coal, oil, and gas. They accounted for more than 84% of human energy use in 2021. As a result, we got 16% of our energy from low-carbon sources, including 4% nuclear energy. Thus, only 12% of our energy consumption came from renewable sources in 2021. Biomass is not included in this report since it is difficult to quantify. However, it is particularly in low-income countries an important source of energy. ²

So we see that there is still a long way to go before renewable energy sources dominate energy consumption. Things appear differently if we focus only on electricity. As the graphic below indicates, almost one-third of the world’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources. Even more than 36 % of our electricity is low carbon if we include nuclear power. ³

Electricity vs. total energy consumption worldwide, graphic by Our World in Data (Ritchie et al., 2022)

What is the reason for this difference between electricity and total energy consumption? Apart from electricity, the total energy consumption also includes transport and heating. Considering this, clean electricity is pursued in many countries, while progress in clean energy is way slower. Consequently, we should be careful while talking about decarbonization. Do we talk about electricity or the whole energy consumption? ³

Advancements in Renewable Energy Technologies

In the last decades renewable energy has undergone technological improvements and massive cost reduction, making renewables increasingly competitive. Especially wind and solar PV, have high investment costs but low operating and maintenance costs. As a result, the International Energy Agency claims that “The cost of electricity from onshore wind and solar PV is increasingly cheaper than from new and some existing fossil fuel plants. In most countries, renewables are the cheapest way of meeting growing demand“ (IEA, s.a). ⁴

Development of solar panel prices and cumulative capacity, graphic by Our World in Data, s.a.

As the graph shows, the panel price of solar cells has fallen sharply in recent decades. This development was accompanied by a global increase in the cumulative solar capacity. ⁵ Consequently, stake holders take the cost effectiveness of renewables into account.

Although investments in renewable energies have augmented a lot in the last decades, it is not enough to meet climate pledges. According to the IEA, “Renewables need to grow more than three times faster” (IEA, 2022) if we want to reach zero emissions by 2050. ⁶

The future of renewable energy

The graphic below depicts the development of energy consumption by source in the last decades. Although energy consumption from renewables has increased, total energy consumption also did. ⁷ In other words, increased consumption of renewable energy is not necessarily accompanied by a higher share of total energy consumption.

Global development of primary energy consumption, graphic by Our World in Data (2022)

Therefore, it´s important to distinguish if the percentage of renewables in the energy mix is rising or only the overall consumption. We are still far away from decarbonized energy consumption, but we see a positive trend.

The realization of many wind and solar projects is tied to government incentive mechanisms. Thus, policymakers have a major impact on the future of green energy. ⁴ Citizens can try to communicate their need for renewable energy or implement renewable energy supply in their community. Villages can reach energy independence through renewables, as in the case of the Bavarian village Wildpoldsried. This community produces so much energy through wind power that they can sell the surplus. ⁸ Local green energy projects like this one can we support a clean energy transition.

Conclusion

Let´s sum up this post about trends and the future of renewable energy. Renewable energy is essential to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. Almost one-third of electricity comes from this clean source of energy worldwide. However, energy consumption does not only consists of electricity. Regarding overall energy use, renewables only make up 16%. A percentage that needs to rise rapidly, if we want to meet climate pledges. In the last decades, renewable energy has become increasingly competitive due to technological improvements and price reductions. Nevertheless, policymakers must support projects of green energy sources to implement them on a global scale. If we want to design a sustainable and worth-living future, we cannot do without renewable energies. 

References:

1. Panwar, N.L., Kaushik, S.C. and Kothari, S. (2011) ‘Role of renewable energy sources in environmental protection: A review’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 15(3), pp. 1513–1524. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2010.11.037.
2. Ritchie, H., (2021) Which sources does our global energy come from? How much is low-carbon? Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/sources-global-energy (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
3. Ritchie, H., Roser, M. and Rosado, P. (2022) ‘Energy’, Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
4. IEA, (s.a). Challenges and opportunities beyond 2021 – Renewable energy market update – Analysis. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update/challenges-and-opportunities-beyond-2021 (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
5. Our World in Data, (s.a). Solar (photovoltaic) panel prices vs. cumulative capacity. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices-vs-cumulative-capacity (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
6. IEA (2022). World Energy Investment 2022 – Analysis. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-investment-2022 (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
7. Ritchie, H., Roser, M. and Rosado, P. (2022) ‘Energy’, Our World in Data [Preprint]. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption (Accessed: 3 April 2023).
8. Schneider, M (2022). Wildpoldsried: Das bayerische Dorf, das Putins Gas nicht braucht. Available at: https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/wildpoldsried-dorf-bayern-putin-gas-energiewende-windkraft-photovoltaik-biogas-news-91738063.html (Accessed: 3 April 2023).