Dear Renewable Energy,
We’ve been in each other’s lives for some time now and I want to take a moment to write down how much you mean to me, to what I do and the world around us.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen how much you’ve grown, against significant odds, showing how our investment in you can help bring the kind of security that would see us through future energy crises, helping us weather conflicts that can hamper economies and our ability to heat and light our homes.
At the recent UN climate summit in Dubai your work to reduce the harm being done by fossil fuels was spoken about in every room, at the highest level. And a recommendation to triple your capacity globally to support the clean energy transition was included in the final UAE Consensus.
Your capacity grew by 50% more in 2023 than in the previous year and the next five years will see the fastest growth yet. Overall, 95% of your expansion will come from solar and wind. Experts predict that if current policies and market conditions remain as they are, your global capacity is on course to increase 250% by 2030.
China was where your greatest growth took place, with them commissioning as much solar photovoltaic in 2023 as the entire world did in 2022. The increases in renewable energy capacity in Europe, the United States and Brazil also hit all-time highs.
How does it feel to know everyone, everywhere wants more of you?
I know there are still groups of people who put you down, insisting there are too many gaps for you to fulfil all our needs. And as with all revolutions, not everything tips at once and more effort needs to go into the smart grids and storage technology necessary to ensure you can support us more completely.
But sometimes people are more comfortable with the status quo, with the way things work now, even if they know there’s a better way. Fossil fuels have been with us a long time: they represent the old, while you are forever young, constantly renewed.
You are the hero of our story, some people have just not realised that yet. But not me.
This year our good friend the International Energy Agency (IEA) hits its half century. The IEA was formed in 1974 in response to conflict in the Middle East and an ensuing energy crisis that rocked the world. Today’s ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and attacks in Israel and Gaza that have destabilised energy security and trade routes, and stoked inflation, remind us how reliance on fossil fuels abandons the world to the goldfish bowl of history, forever failing to learn from our mistakes.
You’ll remember that my first job was as an IEA statistician, analysing energy data in the late 90s. It was an important place, but the institution itself was weighed down by a 20th century fossil fuel narrative. The conversations still focussed on coal and oil, and your part in their story was only just beginning.
Fast forward 25 years and the organisation’s reimagining, under our friend and my old IEA colleague Fatih Birol, of a future based on your central place in the world, in the story, has led to the organisation’s transformation. The IEA now leads the debate, driving the energy agenda and solutions to climate change.
As it holds its 50th anniversary ministerial meeting on Valentine’s Day, co-chaired by Ireland and France with special guests including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, US Climate Envoy John Kerry and former Irish President Mary Robinson, as well as CEOs of major energy companies, we know that it is your power to make our world a safer, better place that now brings them all together.
In signing off this letter, I want you to know that I couldn’t live in a world without you. None of us could. There is still much work to do, but your growing presence gives me confidence that the goals we agreed (we’ll always have Paris), to keep the world secure and stable, can be reached.
I see you, and I see our future together, and it is good.
