Photovoltaics account for 80%! Top current in the next ten years.

over the next decade, accounting for 80% of the 5,500 GW of new clean energy capacity added by 2030.

These are the main takeaways from the latest edition of the International Energy Agency's (IEA) report, Renewables 2024, which forecasts a "huge" increase in new renewable energy capacity by 2030, with 5,500GW of new capacity added for the rest of the decade-more than triple the capacity installed between 2017 and 2023 and roughly equal to the current electricity capacity installed in China, the US, the European Union and India combined.

The International Energy Agency expects installed capacity in the large terrestrial and distributed PV sectors to almost quadruple between 2023 and 2030. Image: American Public Power Association.

The report claims that photovoltaic power generation will drive much of this change. Under the "baseline scenario", which assumes the continuation of current renewable energy installation policies, the IEA expects the installed capacity of large-scale ground plants and the distributed PV sector to almost quadruple between 2023 and 2030.

he chart above compares the projected growth of solar PV with the growth of several other renewable energy technologies. In this context, the projected growth in solar installations is particularly significant. Solar's growth is nearly four-fold.

The deployment of hydropower is relatively stable, with 1140.8GW installed in 2023 and 1576.2GW in 2030; onshore wind power capacity is nearly doubling, increasing from 941.3GW to 1765.2GW by the end of the century.

The chart also shows that the world is not on track to meet the IEA's "accelerated scenario", which assumes that governments will implement policies to encourage faster deployment of renewable energy than the "prime case" scenario. By 2030, the scenario would see more than 10,000GW of renewable generation capacity in operation, closer to the goal of tripling global renewable generation capacity agreed at the COP28 summit, compared with about 9,000GW in the "prime case" scenario. However, this tripling target would require some 11,000 gigawatts of renewable capacity to be committed by 2030, suggesting that neither the IEA's "primary" nor "accelerated" scenarios will meet this target. Given the solar industry's projected rapid growth in both scenarios, continued expansion of solar capacity could be critical if the world is to meet COP28's targets.