World is off track to meet Cop28 renewables goal

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• Aim to treble renewables by 2030
• Increase falls short by 40% a year
• Target to be missed by a third

The world is far from reaching its 2030 renewables target, the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said on Thursday.

Countries committed at the Cop28 summit in Dubai last year to treble renewables capacity in order to limit global warming to 1.5C.

To stay on course global capacity growth needs to accelerate to a minimum rate of 16.4 percent annually through to 2030.

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However, average growth between 2017 and 2023 only reached 10 percent a year.

“If the world keeps the historic annual growth rate of 10 percent, it will only accumulate 7.5 terawatt (TW) of renewables capacity by 2030, missing the target by almost one third,” an Irena report said.

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In 2023 about 473 gigawatts (GW) of capacity was added globally, representing a record 14 percent growth.

At this speed, the world will fall 1.5TW short of the target of 11.2TW, Irena said.

Sultan Al Jaber, the president of Cop28, said that the world must change the narrative that climate investment is a burden, to it being an unprecedented opportunity for shared socio-economic development.

“We need to increase the pace and scale of development. That means increasing collaboration between governments, the private sector, multilateral organisations and civil society,” he said.

Al Jaber urged countries to add strong national energy targets to their updated national climate action plans, which are due by next year. 

Irena’s data shows that from 2022 Asia held its position as a global renewable power generation leader, with more than 3,700 terawatt hours (TWh), followed for the first time by North America with nearly 1,500TWh. 

Despite Africa’s potential and need for rapid, sustainable growth, the continent added only 205TWh of renewable power generation, equivalent to 3.5 percent.