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AsiaElec RENEWABLES AsiaElec

UN report highlights green progress

GLOBAL RENEWABLE energy is now more cost-ef- economies of scale and fierce competition in
fective than ever and provides an opportunity auctions.
to put clean energy at the centre of economic Costs for electricity from new solar photovol-
recovery packages and to bring the world closer taic (PV) plants in the second half of 2019 were
to meeting the Paris Agreement goals, according 83% lower than a decade earlier.
to a new report from the UN Environment Pro- “The chorus of voices calling on governments
gramme (UNEP). to use their [coronavirus] COVID-19 recovery
However, investment commitments still fall packages to create sustainable economies is
way short of the levels needed to meet the Paris growing,” said Inger Andersen, executive direc-
Agreement climate change goals. tor of UNEP.
The report, written together with the Frank- “This research shows that renewable energy
furt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and is one of the smartest, most cost-effective invest-
BloombergNEF (BNEF), found global invest- ments they can make in these packages.”
ment commitments from government and In 2019, nearly 78% of the net new generat-
corporations to build non-hydro renewables ing capacity added globally in 2019 was in wind,
reached 826 GW in 2019. This capacity would solar, biomass and waste, geothermal and small
cost $1 trillion to build by 2030. hydro.
However, the report warned that limiting Investment in renewables, excluding large
the global temperature rise to under 2 degrees hydro, was more than three times that in new
Celsius – the main goal of the Paris Agreement fossil fuel plants. The report also said that a num-
– would require 3,000 GW of new capacity by ber of firsts were achieved in 2019.
2030. Solar additions reached 118 GW, the highest
Also, the $1 trillion of investment commit- ever in a single year, while the largest single solar
ments fall below the $2.7 trillion committed to financing deal, the $4.3bn Al Maktoum IV pro-
renewables during the last decade. ject in the UAE, was signed.
More positively, the key trend of 2019 was Meanwhile, 19.5 GW of corporate power pur-
that the cost of renewables had fallen. chase agreements (PPAs) for renewables were
Renewable energy capacity, excluding large signed, while 785 GW of capacity was awarded
hydro-electric dams of more than 50 MW, grew at auctions.
by 184 GW in 2019. This highest-ever annual In the developing world, renewables invest-
addition was 20 GW, or 12%, more than in 2018. ment outside China and India reached a record
Yet the dollar investment in 2019 was just 1% $59.5bn.
higher than the previous year, at $282.2bn. The 2019 investment brought the share of
The report found that the levelised cost of renewables, excluding large hydro, in global
electricity (LCOE) continued to fall for wind generation to 13.4%, up from 12.4% in 2018 and
and solar, thanks to technology improvements, 5.9% in 2009.™

Week 24 17•June•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P9