We Are Ramping Up Renewable Energy Faster Than We Thought We Would, and Progress Is Made in Nuclear Fusion Technology

IAE Renewable Energy 2022

The International Energy Agency (IEA) put out their 2022 renewable energy report, and it is great news. Here are some of the highlights:

“The world is set to add as much renewable power in the next 5 years as it did in the previous 20 years.”

“The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe in the 2022-27 period is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period.”

“Together, wind and solar will account for over 90% of the renewable power capacity that is added over the next five years.”

“Global solar PV [photovoltaic; e.g. solar panels] capacity is set to almost triple over the 2022-2027 period, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world.” Renewable sources of energy will generate more energy than coal by early 2025.

“This massive expected increase is 30% higher than the amount of growth that was forecast just a year ago, highlighting how quickly governments have thrown additional policy weight behind renewables.”

In fact, the report says they may be underestimating the increase in renewable energy by as much as 25%! How much of this additional 25% can be developed depends on resolving supply chain and infrastructure issues as well as regulations and permitting that slow up adopting renewable energy sources.

“In advanced economies, this faster growth would require various regulatory and permitting challenges to be tackled and a more rapid penetration of renewable electricity in the heating and transport sectors. In emerging and developing economies, it would mean addressing policy and regulatory uncertainties, weak grid infrastructure and a lack of access to affordable financing that are hampering new projects.”

Actions:

In large part this good news is due to government policies, and how much more progress we might make will also depend on such policies.

Some of this has been stimulated by the energy insecurity due to the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia. But massive criminal military interventions notwithstanding, it underlines the importance of voting and keeping after governments to do the right thing.

What is the IEA? From the IEA website:  

The IEA mission is “to work with governments and industry to shape a secure and sustainable energy future for all.”

“The IEA is an autonomous inter-governmental organization…”

“The Governing Board is the main decision-making body of the IEA, composed of energy ministers or their senior representatives from each member country.” There are 31 member nations and 11 association countries. 

The IEA is part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and has been criticized for being wedded to the capitalist market model and not always responsive to the needs and viewpoints of less wealthy nations. However, their analyses of energy capacity are not likely to be biased, and their data are widely sourced in many books on the environment.

Actions:

The data the IEA supplies are likely trustworthy, and, as above, it is up to us to see that the powers that be use the data to act wisely and fairly. Vote, advocate and communicate.

Then there is the news about progress in nuclear fusion technology.

News about progress in nuclear fusion was announced on December 13, 2022 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Nuclear fusion holds promise as a source of greenhouse gas-free energy, but it had been, and remains, stubborn to tame.

This news is big because they finally got more energy than they put in to cause the fusion reaction, but not much more!

Scaling it up can take decades, if it ever happens. Don’t hold your breath, there have been promises upon promises for nuclear fusion.

On the other hand, while these results do not suggest that nuclear fusion is coming to a grid near you anytime soon, it seems to be real progress.

Of course the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, so solar energy is fusion energy that uses a distant reactor. The problem is that the Sun sets and gets blocked by clouds.

Actions:

This news has the science and tech world swooning. Let’s see if they can make this work!

Still, maybe we will again be surprised and fusion is closer than we think. We have had some other recent “never seen before” moments, after all!