Paris Agreement<\/a>, Mr. La Camera said. Now energy security is reinforcing that momentum.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are moving toward a new energy system built primarily on renewables, complemented by the sustainable use of biomass and, above all, green hydrogen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Around 90 per cent of new power generation capacity added worldwide each year now comes from renewables, he noted, and in China, solar capacity overtook coal-fired capacity for the first time in history at the end of July.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe direction of travel is no longer in question,\u201d he said. \u201cThe real question is the speed and scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
NEWLINK
\n China’s largest “PV-Storage-Charging-Swapping” service station under construction. <\/p>\n
Molecules and electrons<\/p>\n
Economic competitiveness in the years ahead, Mr. La Camera said, will depend heavily on whether energy systems can deliver \u201cmolecules\u201d \u2013 green hydrogen \u2013 and \u201celectrons\u201d \u2013 electricity and storage \u2013 at lower cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Renewables, he said, are already among the most competitive sources of electricity. Addressing concerns about intermittency, he pointed to IRENA research showing that renewables paired with storage can deliver round-the-clock, year-round power \u2013 what the agency calls \u201cfirm renewables\u201d \u2013 more cheaply than gas or nuclear.<\/p>\n
Electrification, he added, is central to decarbonisation, with buildings, transport and industry all needing to electrify further.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But with demand growing faster than expected and efficiency gains lagging, he warned the supply-demand gap by 2030 could be wider than previously projected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tripling renewable capacity by 2030 may not be enough alone \u2013 hence IRENA’s 35 by 35 goal: raising electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35 per cent by 2035, likely a key COP31 topic.<\/p>\n
Three challenges<\/p>\n
Mr. La Camera identified three priorities:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Infrastructure \u2013 interconnected, flexible grids supported by artificial intelligence and digitalisation, plus ports and related facilities;\u00a0A fairer legal and regulatory environment \u2013 since fossil fuels still benefit from subsidies that slow the new system’s growthWorkforce \u2013 retraining workers for the energy system ahead.<\/p>\n
For developing countries, high financing costs and limited grids compound the challenge: he is calling on multilateral financial institutions to make infrastructure and grid modernisation a clear priority.<\/p>\n
Asked for his message to the world, Mr. La Camera did not hesitate: \u201cGrid, grid, grid \u2013 interconnectivity, flexibility and balance. This is, I think, the most urgent thing to act on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the crisis is also reshaping how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-631384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}