We Are On the Way to Half Clean Energy by 2030 and Suggestions for News Resources.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) in the recently released World Energy Outlook 2023 report projects that half of the world’s energy will be clean energy by 2030 and it is “unstoppable.” Investment in clean energy has increased by 40% since 2020! A billion dollars a day is being spent on solar deployment. One in 25 cars sold were electric in 2020. Certainly, one can question whether that is a fast enough transition, but it is certainly going in the right direction. The report found that there is still a pathway to keeping to a 1.5 degree centigrade increase in global temperature, but it will be “difficult.”
On the other hand, it wasn’t all sweetness and sunshine. As the BBC article about the IAE report points out, we are on track to be at an increased temperature of 2.4 degrees centigrade by 2100, and energy markets and the world economy are fragile things. Supply chains are weak links, currently especially for wind power. The IAE report said there is particular concern about the Middle East, and that was before the current crisis! As noted in the IAE report, it isn’t just about warming, and it isn’t an uninterrupted march to a cleaner future:
“The energy sector is also the primary cause of the polluted air that more than 90% of the world’s population is forced to breathe, linked to more than 6 million premature deaths a year. Positive trends on improving access to electricity and clean cooking have slowed or even reversed in some countries.”
We have our work cut out for us. For many of us our strongest tools are our voices and our votes, but whatever our personal resources are, we humans need a world where there is less obstruction by the powerful and greedy, more positive action, and an increase in co-benefits! We can do this…!
Many of the news stories we read are behind paywalls, but there are excellent news sources that aren’t. If you want more news, we have some suggestions on our Groups and Website Page under the subsection “News resources.”