A solar plant in Algodones (New Mexico, USA) Steven Clevenger / GETTY
Boosted in a true technical revolution that has skyrocketed their efficiency and drastically cut their production costs, renewables continue to gain market share at a forced pace.
These will be the main source of electricity in the world in 2025, putting an end to five decades of coal supremacy, according to the latest projections of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its latest annual monograph on green energy.
By then, these technologies (solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass ...) will contribute one out of every three kilowatts consumed on a global scale.
Its increase will be exponential: in the next five years, the agency dependent on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that the growth of renewables will be around 40%, boosted to a large extent by the sun and the wind.
The green exodus of the owners of 'black gold'
Renewables smile with Biden in the White House
Unaware of the shock of the health and economic crisis, green energy continues on its way: despite global energy demand falling by 5% in 2020, electricity from renewables will increase by 7% worldwide.
And 90% of the new installed electrical capacity will correspond to this type of source, which in 2021 will continue to grow at the fastest rate in the last five years.
"Renewables are defying the difficulties caused by the pandemic, showing robust growth while other fuels suffer," stresses the director of the Paris-based agency, Fatih Birol.
"Its resilience and positive outlook for the sector is clearly reflected in the continued strong appetite of investors, and the future looks even brighter with new capacity additions underway that will lead to new records this year and next."
Despite covid-19, IEA technicians emphasize that "the investment appetite for renewables remains strong, especially in those countries that have supportive policies and transparent and predictable remuneration."
Solar, they say, continues to break records year after year, "driven by increased competitiveness," and its development will continue after 2022 "at an even faster pace" thanks to "new policies in the United States and China and their development on roofs [of homes and offices] ”.
According to the figures included by the Agency itself in its latest annual report, photovoltaics is already the cheapest energy in history.
Equally relevant will be the boost from wind power, which will expand by up to 80% between now and 2025 largely due to the boost from three markets: Europe, China and the United States.
In the case of offshore wind - windmills installed on offshore pillars - “it will more than double” in this period thanks to the rapid fall in costs and its accelerated development in Asia and the United States.
That the North American giant appears in all the IEA's renewable growth pools is no coincidence: with the arrival to the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden, a convinced defender of clean energy to the detriment of coal and oil, its growth there was key craving in the coming years.
"If the next Administration implements the proposed clean energy policies [in the campaign], these could lead to a much faster deployment of solar photovoltaic and wind, contributing to a faster decarbonization of the electricity sector," says Birol.
Biofuels suffer from the pandemic
While the sun and the wind are having their best days, biofuels, called to partially replace diesel and gasoline in combustion engines, are going through a difficult time.
With crude oil much cheaper than a year ago and large medium-gas transportation fleets, this type of fuel - classified as renewable by the IEA - is heading towards its first annual decline in two decades.
