2023 was an Incredible year for Energy News!
With all of the bad news stories that proliferate our media, it is amazing to know that there were some astonishing shifts that happened in the Energy World last year. Here are some of them:
More than 120 countries, including the world’s two largest carbon emitters,China and the United States, agreed to aim to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030! – a target that if met, would keep the worldon track for 1.5°C.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), announced in October that global fossil fuel use may peak this year, two years earlier than predicted just 12months ago! The world installed so much clean energy in 2023 that the IEA has had to revise its forecasts up (again) by an incredible 33% in one year.
Humanity will install an astonishing 413 GW of solar this year, 58% morethan in 2022, which itself marked an almost 42% increase from 2021. That means the world’s solar capacity has doubled in the last 18 months, andthat solar is now the fastest-growing energy technology in history.
China’s carbon emissions are likely to start falling next year. This is the most important climate change story of the year, because China is the world’slargest carbon polluter, and was supposed to still be six years away from peakemissions!!
China installed of 300 GW of solar and wind in 2023, almost double its 2022 total. It’s the largest ever single year deployment of energy in ourspecies’ history.
China also currently has 210 GW of pumped storage and 100 GW ofbatteries either in operation, under construction, or contracted.
In the USA, a record 33 GW of solar was installed across the country, carbon emissions are set to fall by around 3% and
12 states have nowpassed laws requiring a shift to 100% clean electricity.
The US Inflation Reduction Act is the single largest commitment any government has yet made to vie for leadership in the next energy economy and has resulted in the largest manufacturing drive in the United States since WW2.
The US legislation has already yielded commitments of more than$300 billion in new battery, solar and hydrogen electrolyser plants.
The IEA just released new forecasts showing the United States is set for remarkable acceleration in clean energy deployment over the next two years, with wind, water, and solar expected to generate almost twice the amount of electricity as coal by 2025. Grid battery storage capacity will triple during thesame period.
Coal generation in Europe plummeted in 2023, leading to fossil fuels’ share of electricity generation falling to a record low of 17% in the first half of theyear, while solar installations increased by 40% for the third year in a row.
In Holland, half of all electricity came from renewables in 2023.
Germany’s emissions fell to their lowest since the 1950s due to less coal-fired power and reduced output by energy-intensive industries, and the share of renewables on its power grids rose by to 55% of the total, passing the halfway mark for the first time ever.
Rooftop solar overtook coal as Australia’s biggest source of electricitycapacity.
In the UK, the amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels has declined to its lowest level since 1957!
So energy system transformation around the world is really going “full steam ahead”!
International Energy Agency 2023 Report
The IEA has released its latest update on what is happening in the Global Energy Transition & the outlook for where we are going. As the IEA was originally set up by the energy industries at a time when they were fossil fuel & nuclear power dominated, their...
The UK’s Energy Shift
This is a brilliant interview with Emily Pinchbeck, who provides a great overview of the massive shift that is happening to our energy system. She is the Chief Executive of Energy UK, a position that she has held since July 2020. She is an expert in whole-economy...