2023-08-29 20:15:09
About 86% (187 gigawatts) of the renewable capacity commissioned in 2022 had a lower cost than electricity generated from fossil fuels (coal, gas), IRENA said in a report published on Tuesday.
Last year, the global electricity sector directly saved with renewables (solar, wind, hydro, etc.) 520 billion dollars on the cost of fuels thanks to the production sites installed in the world since 2000.
In addition to these direct savings, the reduction in CO2 and air pollutant emissions translates into “substantial economic benefits”, the report adds.
Without the rollout achieved over the past two decades, the economic repercussions of rising fossil fuel prices in 2022 would have been far more severe, “exceeding even the capacity of many governments to mitigate them,” the report points out.
The weighted average cost of electricity fell in 2022 by 3% for photovoltaic, 5% for onshore wind, 13% for bioenergy and 22% for geothermal energy.
Since 2010, the global weighted average cost of solar PV electricity has fallen by 89% to $0.049/kWh, almost a third less than the cheapest fossil fuel internationally. For onshore wind, the decline was 69% to $0.033/kWh in 2022, just under half the value of the cheapest option in fossil fuels.
To stay below 1.5°C of pre-industrial warming, the world will still need to add an average of 1,000 GW of renewable energy per year until 2030, more than three times the 2022 levels. supports IRENA.
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