Renewable Energy Production to Increase 3x to 10x by 2050

The total global potential for renewable energy "is substantially higher than both current and future projected global energy demand" is the message of the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Abu Dhabi. The report states that renewable energy production will increase "anywhere from roughly three-fold to more than ten-fold by 2050."

At a press conference, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri cited wind energy's 32% growth rate in 2009 as an example of "the impressive growth rate of renewables". The IPCC's experts on energy and climate science reported that almost half of the new electricity production capacity installed in the world in the two year period 2008-2009 was renewable sources (140 Gigawatts of 300 Gigawatts).

The panel experts stated that 19% of the total global electricity supply came from renewable energy in 2008. The share of renewable energy rose to 12.9% of the global primary energy production and provided more than six times more than the global nuclear energy production at 2%.

"During the last two years, our industry installed new wind farms producing electricity equivalent to more than 25 nuclear power stations," said Christian Kjaer, Chief Executive Officer of EWEA (European Wind Energy Association) in Abu Dhabi. "More importantly, the world's leading scientists have now confirmed that this is merely the beginning of a development that could see wind power providing in excess of 20% of global electricity supply."