Solar and Wind Power Plants Produced Record Amount of Energy in 2022, Construction of New Capacities Still Insufficiently Fast

Global electricity production reached a record clean level last year, reflecting a boom in renewable energy and thus marking the beginning of the end of the fossil age, according to a report by the independent climate think tank Ember.

Ember’s analysis concludes that 12 percent of the world’s energy last year came from solar and wind, an increase from 10 percent of global electricity production the previous year.

According to the report, solar energy was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 18th consecutive year, increasing by 24 percent year-on-year and adding enough energy to cover the annual electricity demand in South Africa.

Electricity production from wind farms also increased by 17 percent last year, and as senior electricity analyst at Ember and lead author of the study Małgorzata Wiatros-Motyka told CNBC, the whole world is currently entering an era of clean energy, with all eyes now on wind and solar, which are expected to reshape the global economy.

This analysis, based on electricity data from 78 countries and representing 93 percent of global electricity demand, provides the first accurate picture of the electricity transition in 2022. It also shows that more than 60 countries now produce over 10 percent of their electricity from wind and solar.

It is certainly important to highlight that renewable and nuclear sources together accounted for 39 percent of global electricity production in 2022, which is new record.

Despite this progress, Ember researchers warn that the construction of solar and wind power plants is still not fast enough to meet the growing global demand for electricity, meaning that fossil fuels remain present to fill the gap.

Consequently, it was found that last year coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel in the world, was the largest single source of electricity globally, as it produced 36 percent of global energy, leaving significant consequences for the climate.

However, 2022 could mark the peak of electricity emissions and the last year of fossil fuel growth, with expectations that in 2023 all demand could be met with clean energy.

The International Energy Agency announced last year that the electricity sector needs to transition from the highest-emitting sector to the first sector to reach net zero by 2040 if the global economy is to decarbonize by mid-century.

For this to happen, wind and solar must account for 41 percent of global energy production by 2030, a sharp increase from last year’s 12 percent.

Yet, is everything rosy?

These data are interesting considering that investments in new wind farms in Europe fell to their lowest level in over a decade last year due to rising costs and bureaucracy that threaten to undermine the region’s energy security and climate goals, as we have previously reported in Lider.

Investors financed only ten gigawatts of new capacity in the European Union last year, far less than the annual 31 gigawatts deemed necessary to meet the bloc’s environmental goals, and of course, nothing is better in Croatia, although we are fortunate that hydroelectric plants over half a century old are included in the statistics, allowing us to maintain a high position on the rankings regarding the share of renewable energy sources in immediate consumption.

The director of Acciona Energia, Aljoša Pleić, recently stated for Lider that we can no longer rely on outdated infrastructure, but we need new capacities, particularly wind and solar, as something applicable throughout Croatia, as well as other location-specific technologies such as geothermal sources and biomass.

According to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, Croatia is obligated to build 1500 megawatts of new renewable energy facilities by the end of 2024, which, according to Pleić, will be unfeasible if institutions do not seriously accelerate and adopt all necessary acts in the coming months.

– In times of energy crisis and soaring energy prices, other European countries have prioritized the transition to renewable energy sources. We are only doing this declaratively, while in reality, we are not enabling the construction of new facilities. Investors are very interested, but for now, they can only wait as the announced subordinate regulations are not being adopted – says Pleić.

There are plenty of problems in this sector, and whether the whole world will soon fully transition to renewable sources, and whether this is even possible in such a short time frame, remains to be seen.