World’s Second Largest Source of Electricity Is Now Renewables

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Other milestones were reached in 2013, when global non-hydro renewable electricity exceeded oil-fired generation for the first time and renewable electricity overtook natural gas to become the world’s second largest source of electricity, producing 22 percent of the total.

Carbon emissions falling fast as wind & solar replace fossil fuels: http://t.co/1xVxalUDPn #renewables pic.twitter.com/ylfE2sYKb9

— UN Environment (@UNEP) August 18, 2015

In the same year, electricity generated by coal reached its highest level yet at 9,613 TWh, representing 41.1 percent of global electricity production. The growth in coal generation was driven by non-OECD countries.

Globally, more renewable energy is consumed in the residential, commercial and public services sectors than elsewhere, but there are two distinct patterns of use.

In non-OECD countries, only 22.3 percent of renewables are used for electricity and heat production and 60.7 percent in homes, commercial and public sectors. In OECD countries, more than half of the renewable primary energy supply (58.5 percent) is used for electricity and heat.

Huge Challenge

The IEA’s data will encourage renewable energy’s supporters, but they also show how much the world continues to rely on fossil fuels for its electricity.

In 1971, coal produced about 2 TWh of global electrical power, but that figure is now almost five times higher. Replacing that much generation with clean fuels will be a huge challenge, despite the very rapidly accelerating growth of renewables.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s director, has said that, without clear direction from the UN climate summit to be held in Paris in December, “the world is set for warming well beyond the 2°C goal,”—the internationally-agreed limit for global temperature rise that is intended to prevent climate change reaching dangerous levels.

The IEA World Energy Outlook 2014 said that, by 2040, the world’s energy supply mix is likely to divide into four almost-equal parts: oil, gas, coal and low-carbon sources.

This scenario, it said, “puts the world on a path consistent with a long-term global average temperature increase of 3.6°C.”

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