Earth Today | Renewables on the rise

LARGE-SCALE greenhouse gas emissions reduction is possible as part of global efforts to realise a more secure climate future – but only with the right policy and investments that enable clean technologies.

This is the picture that has been painted by a recent policy brief from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled Cheaper. Cleaner. Unstoppable. Clean technologies that are delivering for the climate. It also calls for deliberate strategies to reach positive tipping points that help both people and planet.

These “positive tipping points”, it said, emerge when falling costs meet infrastructure expansion and supportive policies, as well as changing market expectations that prompt the quick and ready adoption of new technologies or practices.

“If supported through sustained policy, finance, and institutional action, these dynamics could contribute to limiting temperature exceedance, strengthening adaptation to unavoidable climate impacts and supporting pathways consistent with returning warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the longer term,” the UNEP brief noted.

A positive tipping point, the document said, is reached “when a clean technology, practice or behaviour becomes increasingly affordable, competitive and socially accepted, leading to rapid and self-reinforcing uptake”.

There are, it said, several noted low-carbon technologies that have now reached practical thresholds for adoption or which are otherwise fast nearing those thresholds. They include renewable power and storage where already significant cost reductions are being seen.

“In most regions, new solar and onshore wind generation are now cheaper than new coal or gas-fired power based on a levelised cost of electricity analysis,” the brief explained, referencing 2024 and 2026 findings from Imperial College London and the International Renewable Energy respectively.

“Solar and onshore wind are now the single largest item in the global energy

investment inventory, valued at US$450 billion. Since 2020, renewables have accounted for more than 75 per cent of new power capacity, with solar and wind scaling faster than any previous energy sources,” it revealed.

“Many countries have already passed a tipping point where variable renewable energy sources – principally solar and wind – often paired with on-grid battery storage, now account for the majority of annual electricity generation,” the brief added.

This, it said, is especially good news since the electricity sector is responsible for 34 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions – which drive the warming of the planet and trigger a range of climate impacts.

These impacts include the blistering heat being experienced this summer; compromised marine life because of increasing sea surface temperatures; and extreme hurricane and drought events that have devastated islands of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, over recent years.

The next four years, the brief said, are “pivotal”, with the urgent need for “implementation and investment alignment” as governments refine industrial strategies, reform energy markets and mobilise climate finance, in the face of growing public pressure to act.

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