Renewable energy boom. All because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine

In the coming years, not only the countries of the European Union and the United States will rapidly switch to solar and wind, but also China and India, where the Russian Federation wants to redirect exports of oil, coal and gas.

Major European wars often led to powerful technological breakthroughs. A major war between Russia and Ukraine will dramatically accelerate the development of renewable energy sources (RES) around the world. This forecast was made by the International Energy Agency (IEA, IEA).

“In the next five years, more renewable energy capacity will be commissioned worldwide as in the previous 20 years,” said the agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, presenting the IEA’s new study “RES 2022” ( Renewables 2022) on December 6. Its authors proceed from the fact that the growth rate in the renewable energy sector will be 30% higher than predicted just a year ago.

“War accelerates Europe’s transition to clean energy”

The IEA has never had to revise its own forecasts upward so much before. This agency was created in Paris after the oil crisis of 1973-1974 by the industrialized countries of the West and studies the global energy market, and also coordinates the strategic oil reserves of its members.

For the production of electricity using renewable energy sources on the planet until 2027 inclusive, installations with a total capacity of 2,400 gigawatts (GW) will be built, IEA experts say and explain that this is the current capacity of all power plants in China. But another comparison can be made. If we consider that the capacity of a power unit of a modern nuclear power plant is usually from 1 to 2 GW, then we are talking about the construction of solar and wind power plants in the next five years, comparable to at least 1,000 nuclear power plants.

Until now, the main motive for the development of solar and wind energy was the protection of the global climate, “now the main driving force has become the desire to ensure energy security,” said Fatih Birol in an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a turning point for renewable energy in Europe. The war is accelerating Europe’s transition to clean energy,” the IEA study said. Additionally, “high prices for fossil fuels and electricity caused by the global energy crisis significantly increase the economic attractiveness of renewable energy technologies.”

Especially significant, according to the agency’s experts, the acceleration is in Germany (where Russia, we remember, until 2022 will be the main supplier of natural gas, coal and oil) and in Spain. For these two countries, the forecast for the introduction of renewable energy sources has increased by 50% and 60% compared to last year. Overall, the amount of electricity production from renewable sources in EU countries will double by 2027, according to renewable energy experts.

China, USA and India will be centers for the introduction of renewable energy

However, the biggest investor in renewable energy in the next five years will be China, the IEA points out. About half of all new renewable energy capacities to be commissioned worldwide before 2027 will be installed in China, the agency’s experts believe, and they point to a new five-year plan adopted by the country’s leadership that have “very ambitious”, as they write, goals in the field of RES. Moreover, they assume that this plan will be surpassed, and that China will reach the goal of 1200 GW of installed capacity of solar and wind power plants earlier than 2030.

Along with China, two-thirds of the increase in global renewable energy capacity over the next five years will also be provided by the United States of America and India. In the US, an accelerated transition to clean energy is part of President Joe Biden’s giant anti-crisis program called the Inflation Reduction Act. It was approved in August 2022. In addition, 37 of the 50 states have developed their own goals for the introduction of renewable energy, IEA experts said.

They also call ambitious the plans of the Indian government, which has announced the goal of installing 500 GW of generating capacity in the country by 2030, using non-fossil, but renewable energy sources. In this case, the bet will be made mainly on solar energy. This will contribute to the international diversification of solar panel production, which is currently more than 80% concentrated in China, according to the IEA. According to the agency’s forecast, investment in photovoltaic panel plants in the US and India will grow 7 times in the next five years compared to the previous five years and will reach $25 billion.

IEA predicts accelerated development of photovoltaics

So, according to the IEA, the centers of the upcoming global renewable energy boom will be China, the European Union, the United States and India (in that order). For Russia, with its fossil fuel export business model, this means that after losing markets in the EU and the US due to Western sanctions and its own counter-sanctions, it risks selling less coal, oil and natural gas to China and India than it expects. After all, in the next five years, both countries will develop renewable energy at an accelerated pace.

Another forecast from the IEA study states that photovoltaics will develop more dynamically than wind energy until 2027. Partly because now, following the “windy” northern countries, the states of “global south” with an abundance of sun will more actively participate in the development of renewable energy sources. In any case, agency experts predict a tripling of the installed capacity of solar panels on the planet in the next five years.

The total capacity of wind turbines doubled in the same period. Here, one of the obstacles is the lengthy licensing procedures. In total, solar and wind installations will account for 90% of the increase in global renewable energy capacity, according to IEA experts. In other words, they assigned instead a marginal role to hydropower, biogas, geothermal and other types of RES.