Yet fossil fuel demand still exceeds safe climate scenarios, and growing poverty is leaving millions without access to clean, reliable electricity.
In 2010, the International Energy Agency called coal “the backbone of global electricity generation” in its outlook for the next decade of worldwide energy markets.
On Tuesday, the Paris-based intergovernmental organization said renewables would make up 80% of new power generation by 2030, overtaking the fossil fuels that presently dominate electricity production.
Installing solar photovoltaics is “consistently cheaper” than building coal or natural gas plants in most countries, and solar projects “now offer some of the lowest cost electricity ever seen,” the IEA’s researchers said in their decade-long outlook for the 2020s. Continue reading.