The world will fall short of meeting the UN’s objective to triple renewable capacity by 2030, despite the fact that many countries are expected to reach or surpass their national targets, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) most recent report.  

The report, entitled Renewables 2024, explained that the world is set to deploy more than 5.5TW of renewable energy between now and 2030, three-times the additions between 2017 and 2023 and equivalent to the current power capacity of China, India, the US and the EU combined.  

A total of 70 countries accounting for 80% of global renewable power capacity will be leading this charge and are expected to reach or surpass their national renewable targets. 

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said: “Renewables are moving faster than national governments can set targets for. This is mainly driven not just by efforts to lower emissions or boost energy security – it is increasingly because renewables today offer the cheapest option to add new power plants in almost all countries around the world.” 

However, this will not be enough to reach the UN target set at COP28 last year. According to the IEA, meeting the UN target will require upgrades to 25 million kilometres of electricity grids, matching the speed of renewables deployment with that of their integration into the grid and constructing 1.5TW of energy storage.  

Solar PV is set to register 80% of renewable capacity by 2030 and wind to double its current expansion rate.  

According to Power Technology’s parent company, GlobalData, China, the US, Germany and India are the four leading countries for solar and wind generation across the globe. Last month, the IEA released a report claiming that tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 and doubling the rate of energy efficiency would cut global greenhouse gas emissions by ten billion tonnes.