Government support and lower costs will power stronger-than-expected global growth in renewable energy over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.
After a record 2015, global renewable electricity capacity will grow by 825 gigawatts by 2021, a massive 42-percent rise, the IEA said.
The estimate is 13 percent higher than the agency’s forecast last year. The IEA has been criticized in some quarters for being over-cautious about renewables.
In 2021, solar, wind and other renewable sources will provide comprise 28 percent of world electricity production compared to 23 percent in 2015, the IEA said.
Last year marked a “turning point” for renewables in terms of investment and use, the IEA declared.
The pick-up is mostly down to “stronger policy backing” in the United States, China, India and Mexico, it said.
Costs are expected to drop by around 25 percent for solar panels, and 15 percent for onshore wind.
“We are witnessing a transformation of global power markets led by renewables and, as is the case with other fields, the center of gravity for renewable growth is moving to emerging markets,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol in the statement.
It highlighted China as “the undisputable global leader of renewable energy expansion.”
China accounted for 40 percent of all renewable capacity increases last year, a rate that amounted to installing two wind turbines every hour, the agency said.
Worldwide around half a million solar panels were installed every day in 2015.
The exceptional growth has led the IEA to be “more optimistic” about the next five-year period, Birol said.
“However, even these higher expectations remain modest compared with the huge untapped potential of renewables,” he added.
Generation from renewables is expected by 2021 to equal the total electricity generation of the US and the European Union put together today, the IEA said.
But, it warned, grounds for caution remain.
“Policy uncertainty persists in too many countries, slowing down the pace of investments,” it said.
Difficulties in integrating networks in China, South Africa and Japan, and financing conditions that penalize developing countries are other hurdles, said the head of the IEA’s renewables energy division, Paolo Frankl, in a telephone conference.

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Aside from electricity, he said stubbornly low global oil prices had had a direct impact on renewable heat and biofuels, which were developing very slowly.
Speaking in Singapore, IEA said the oversupplied oil market will be rebalanced earlier than expected if major crude producers implement a deal to cap output when they meet next month.
Under current conditions, the IEA expects global output to exceed demand until the second half of 2017, Fatih Birol told journalists on the sidelines of an energy conference.
“But we know that the producers are thinking of intervening in the markets. The OPEC and non-OPEC producers, if they intervene in the markets, this rebalance can be earlier than the second half of 2017,” he said.
In a surprise move, OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) members led by Saudi Arabia last month agreed on a deal to trim production, sending crude prices surging.

The OPEC deal which aims to stabilize prices is the first to limit production since 2008 but details will only be determined during the group’s meeting on November 30 in Vienna.
Iran was exempted from the cuts as it is still ramping up production depleted by years of crippling Western economic sanctions lifted only in January.
Production has outpaced demand over the past two years, with the resulting supply glut hammering prices from highs of more than $100 a barrel in June 2014 to near 13-year lows below $30 in February this year.
Prices are currently hovering above $50 a barrel ahead of next month’s OPEC meeting.
But some analysts say Iraq’s recent insistence that it should also be exempt from the cuts could derail implementation of the deal.
Iraq’s oil minister Jabbar Al-Luaibi said Sunday in Baghdad that his country should not participate because it is waging a war against Daesh terrorists.
“There is growing skepticism that OPEC will be able to cut a deal. Iraq’s oil minister has insisted that the country remain exempt from a freeze and aims to increase production,” said Alex Furber, an analyst with CMC Markets in Singapore.
“The Iraqi oil minister’s comments were in many ways the big story overnight for investors as they worry that an OPEC deal is harder to put together than the Saudis and the Russians are suggesting,” said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at forex broker AxiTrader.
McKenna said, however, that continuing talks between Russia and OPEC kept hopes alive for an output cut.
“Oil is still hanging tough and I’m still in the camp (which believes that) a deal will be nutted out and inked in November,” he said in a note.

Source: Arab News