Interesting Chart: How Much Solar or Wind Dominate Renewable Energy in Different Countries

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or follow us on Google News!

I used to be going by the brand new Integrating Solar and Wind: Global experience and emerging challenges report from the Worldwide Power Company (IEA), and I seen an attention-grabbing graph. Effectively, there are no less than a couple of attention-grabbing charts, however this one chart is one thing I don’t assume I’ve ever seen.

The chart (above and under) exhibits three core issues for a handful of chosen markets within the yr 2023 in comparison with the yr 2018. It exhibits 1) the electrical energy technology share in these markets (all international locations besides within the case of California) that’s coming from photo voltaic PV energy, 2) the electrical energy technology share in these markets that’s coming from wind energy, and, right here’s the brand new one: 3) the diploma to which these techniques’ renewable vitality techniques are extra photo voltaic dominated or extra wind dominated.

Some markets — like California, Vietnam, Australia, and Chile — have gotten extra photo voltaic dominated. Different markets have gotten extra wind dominated — like Nice Britain (extraordinarily so), Denmark (barely so, but it surely’s already extraordinarily wind dominated), and Eire. The latter are getting a lift from the rising offshore wind market.

China, humorous sufficient, is sort of evenly cut up between photo voltaic technology and wind technology and that has not modified. What might shock some is how low the shares of each are regardless of such extraordinarily large-scale deployments of photo voltaic and wind in China. That simply exhibits how giant the vitality market there’s and the way a lot the nation continues to be putting in and utilizing fossil gas energy sources.

In fact, these are notable markets which have seen development in electrical energy market share of photo voltaic and wind. So, progress is relative right here, and as a consequence of its dimension, China is extra usually in comparison with the European Union and United States. California, one other relative giant financial system, doesn’t have essentially the most dramatic development in renewable technology share both.

In a separate chart (under), we get mixed annual photo voltaic and wind electrical energy technology share for a few of these markets, in addition to their most hourly technology share.

I discover it a bit humorous, and stunning, that Texas and Nice Britain are so comparable right here, and likewise that Germany and Spain are and Denmark and South Australia are.

One factor all of this exhibits is there are lots of methods to develop a renewable vitality grid, and totally different international locations can lean on wind or photo voltaic to totally different extents with a view to retire fossil gas energy crops. Naturally, wind and photo voltaic are complementary, so each nation and state ought to use some combination of each. Additionally, any markets simply getting rolling on this now have a number of nice examples of learn how to do it, and so they’ve obtained the teachings discovered and recognized finest practices from these locations to assist them keep away from hurdles, pitfalls, and distracting challenges.

“(Variable renewable energy) is becoming central to the operation of power systems in many countries and regions,” the IEA notes. “In South Australia, while in 2018 VRE provided less than 50% of total generation in roughly half of the year, by 2023 VRE generation provided at least 70% of the region’s total generation during half of the year. In another example, Germany’s power grid operated with hourly VRE shares below 30% for most of 2018. By 2023 almost 70% of the year saw a VRE share above 30%. Many other systems around the world have seen similar transitions.” Certainly. Now let’s simply velocity all of it up.

There are another attention-grabbing charts within the report as nicely.

What’s attention-grabbing right here? To me, two issues are attention-grabbing right here. For one, it’s attention-grabbing to see how a lot photo voltaic PV energy capability is anticipated to outgrow wind energy capability within the coming years. Going from 2022 to 2024, you possibly can see far more of the bar in 2024 is coming from photo voltaic, and 2026 it’s much more so. The second factor is simply how a lot the mixed cumulative capability of photo voltaic and wind is anticipated to develop within the coming 6 years. In fact, to some extent, we’ve seen this story repeatedly, so it’s not a shock, but it surely’s nonetheless nice to visualise and see.

It’s somewhat arduous to utilize this one, however there’s one massive basic level and it’s somewhat enjoyable getting misplaced in every section of the chart. Briefly, increasingly international locations are getting a better and better share of their electrical energy from photo voltaic and wind energy. Right here’s how the IEA leads into that:

“Power systems around the world have done rapid progress on VRE uptake, and expected capacity additions are set to continue driving the contribution of VRE to new heights. From a sample of 133 countries covering 99% of global electricity generation, in 2018 only around 15 countries had an annual VRE generation share of 10% or higher — that amount of countries nearly doubled in 2023. By 2028 almost 70 countries are set to have a VRE generation share of at least 10%, whereas those with VRE shares above 30% will grow from only four in 2018 to more than 20 in 2028. This shows that higher levels of VRE penetration will not only be a reality for a select group of frontrunner systems, but a common trend for a large group of systems around the world. This highlights the speed of the transformation that electricity systems are experiencing around the world, with solar PV and wind playing a key role in this transition.” Certainly. Now let’s simply velocity all of it up.

You may take a look at the entire IEA report here.