- A new Global Electricity Review indicates that Earth has crossed its peak carbon emissions as of 2022, with increased reliance on solar power and wind energy forecast.
- The report says that 2022’s worldwide increase in solar power generation alone would have met South Africa’s entire power demand for a year.
- Globally, renewable sources of energy amount to 39 percent of power generation.
It has come to light in recent years that the most damaging effects of climate change will first hit the global south. Last year we saw unprecedented flooding in South Africa and Nigeria caused by the effects of global warming.
This year historic storms are blowing across Africa. Tropical Storm Freddy killed more than 200 people in Malawi last month, leading the country to call a state of disaster in its wake.
But it isn’t all bad news. The latest report from environmental research group Ember points to record numbers of electricity generated by renewable means worldwide.
According to the Global Electricity Review 2023, worldwide generation from wind power and solar power origins has reached a record 12 percent – the most ever.
Of the renewable sources, solar power is the most popular with it being the fastest growing electricity source for the last 18 years in a row after a 24 percent rise in 2022.
“The increase in global solar generation in 2022 could have met the annual electricity demand of South Africa, and the rise in wind generation could have powered almost all of the UK,” says the report.
Ember now expects reliance on renewables to slowly increase going forward, and reliance on fossil fuels to do the opposite.
“Clean power growth is likely to exceed electricity demand growth in 2023; this would be the first year for this to happen outside of a recession,” the report reads.
Ember forecasts that fossil fuel electricity generation will fall by small increments at first, starting in 2023, with bigger falls in subsequent years as wind and solar grow further.
This means that 2022 hit “peak” emissions and that a “new era of falling power sector emissions is close.” Effectively, and we don’t mean to be too optimistic here, we may have hit a climate change turning point.
Ember estimates that 39 percent of world electricity generation is from renewable sources, including nuclear. The other 61 percent comes from fossil fuels that produce environmentally damaging carbon emissions.
The largest culprit is still coal, which accounts for a whopping 36 percent of the world’s electricity generation. While coal generation is expected to continue to grow (with new coal-fired power stations to be built in India and China), it is growing at a slower-than-expected rate.
South Africa has invested billions of Rands into its Just Energy Transition project. Last year it was revealed that the South African government is set to build four green hydrogen power generation plants at the cost of about R270 billion with the help of the UK.
Other European nations like Germany and France have pledged billions towards South Africa’s transition from coal plants to renewable energy projects, but these initiatives are all in the offing.
Meanwhile, South Africans are dealing with Stage 6 outages across the nation, leaving areas without power for more than 10 hours out of the day.
