Renewables 2017 Global Status Report (GSR)

The 2017 edition of the REN21 Renewables Global Status Report, launched in June 2017 to provide a comprehensive annual overview of the state of renewable energy, reveals that 2016 was another extraordinary year for renewable energy.

As of 2015, renewable energy provided 19.3% of global final energy consumption, of which 9.1% were traditional biomass and 10.2% modern renewables.

In the power sector, solar photovoltaics (47% of newly installed renewable power capacity in 2016) and wind (34% of newly installed renewable power capacity) were the most dynamic areas. Overall, by end of 2016, renewables covered 24.5% of global electricity demand.

2016 was the third year in a row where decoupling of economic growth and energy-related CO2 emissions occurred.

Despite good performance of renewables and significant advancement in the global renewable energy transition, further and faster progress is required. Some areas:

  • Although achieved progress in adoption of renewable energy is highly remarkable, it is not fast enough to reach the Paris Agreement goals.
  • Deployment of renewables for heating and cooling remains strongly underdeveloped.
  • Community-based renewable energy initiatives, which hold potential to make a vital contribution to speed the energy transition, now face less favourable frameworks compared to some years ago in several countries, resulting in slower pace of growth. As a positive trend, community-based schemes diversify their market activities, for example to also include storage and demand-side management.

 

The full report is available on the REN21 website:

Renewables 2017 Global Status Report (GSR)

 

Sustainability in Practice: Renewable Energy Cooperatives

Cooperatives for renewable energy are examples of proactive citizen initiatives aiming for implementation of alternative energy supply models. Main success factors can be identified:

Renewable energy cooperatives (pdf)

(Beggio, Giovanni; Kusch, Sigrid: Renewable energy cooperatives: main features and success factors in collectively implementing energy transition. Proceedings “Quaesti – The 3rd Virtual Multidisciplinary Conference”, 2015, pp.233-237)

Contact: Giovanni Beggio, M.Sc., giovanni.beggio(at)scensers.org

Urban Community Power

Renewable energy facilities owned by the community: a glance at cooperatives for renewable energy in the context of sustainable urbanisation:

Cooperatively Owned RE Facilities

(Kusch, Sigrid; Beggio, Giovanni: Cooperatively owned renewable energy facilities – unlocking urban community power. In: Condie, Jenna; Cooper, Anna Mary (edt.): Dialogues of sustainable urbanisation: social science research and transition to urban contexts. Penrith: University of Western Sydney, 2015, pp. 252-255 (ISSC Book of Blogs))