ISLAMABAD: Global renewable power capacity saw a significant increase in 2024, reaching 4,448 gigawatts, with solar energy contributing the largest share, totaling 1,865GW.

The 585GW addition last year indicates a 92.5 per cent share of the total capacity expansion, and a record rate of annual growth of 15.1pc, according to Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025 released by the International Renewable Energy Agency on Wednesday.

Although 2024 marks yet another benchmark in renewable energy capacity and growth, progress still falls short of the 11.2 terawatts needed to align with the global goal to triple installed renewable energy capacity by 2030.

To reach this goal, renewable capacity must now expand by 16.6pc annually until 2030, according to the IRENA report.

Based in Abu Dhabi, IRENA says Asia has more than doubled its installed solar power since 2022, with 247.9GW added in 2023 and 327.1GW in 2024. However, the largest capacity increases occurred in China (+278.0GW) and India (+24.5GW). South Korea followed, delivering a significant increase compared to previous years with 3.1GW of added solar capacity.

In 2024, renewable power capacity expansion increased compared to 2023 and remained well above the long-term trend. As in previous years, most of this expansion occurred in China and, to a lesser extent, the United States. However, most other countries also increased their expansion of renewable capacity in 2024 compared to 2023.

The share of renewables in total capacity expansion has increased significantly in 2024, reaching 92.5pc, compared to 85.8pc in 2023. The renewable share of total installed power capacity also rose by more than three percentage points from 43.1pc in 2023 to 46.4pc in 2024.

The upward trend in these shares continues to show both the rapid and increasing growth in the use of renewables and the declining expansion of non-renewable capacity. At the global level, the latter is partly due to the large amount of net decommissioning that has occurred for many years in some regions. However, more still needs to be done to achieve the global goal adopted at COP28 to triple installed renewable power capacity by 2030 to reach over 11TW.

Renewable hydropower has seen a rise of 15.0GW in added capacity, a notable rebound from the all-time low of 11.3GW in 2023. However, 96.0pc of the increase comes from China. Other countries where capacity increased by more than 0.5GW were Pakistan, Ethiopia, Viet Nam, Tanzania, Indonesia and Nepal.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2025