These 4 charts show the state of renewable energy in 2022
Nothing, it seems, can hold back the advance of renewable energy. A record amount of renewable capacity was installed in 2021, despite post-pandemic delays and rising raw material costs.
Now the International Energy Agency (IEA) expects that record to be beaten again in 2022, at least in part as nations that have relied on fossil fuels from Russia, push ahead with new renewable capacity in response to the war in Ukraine.
Renewable energy growth means the world now has 295 gigawatts of green generating capacity, says the IEA, demonstrating what the World Economic Forum’s Fostering Effective Energy Transition 2021 report described as its “unprecedented acceleration” in recent years.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.