PEI Mistake Capacity for Output (Again!)

By Paul Homewood

The latest guff from the IEA, via PEI:

Boosted by a strong solar PV market, renewables accounted for almost two-thirds of net new power capacity around the world last year, with almost 165 GW coming online, according to a new report, writes Kelvin Ross

New solar PV capacity grew by 50 per cent last year, with China accounting for almost half of the global expansion.

That’s one of the headline findings from the International Energy Agency’s latest renewables market analysis and forecast.

The IEA notes that for the first time, solar PV additions rose faster than any other fuel, surpassing the net growth in coal.

Almost 165 GW of new renewables capacity came online last year according to the IEA

Boosted by a strong solar PV market, renewables accounted for almost two-thirds of net new power capacity around the world last year, with almost 165 GW coming online, according to the new report.

And renewables will continue to have a strong growth in coming years, according to the IEA, which is forecasting that by 2022, renewable electricity capacity should increase by 43 per cent.

"We see renewables growing by about 1000 GW by 2022, which equals about half of the current global capacity in coal power, which took 80 years to build," said Dr Fatih Birol, IEA executive director. "What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV. We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022."

The IEA’s renewable forecast for this year is 12 per cent higher than last year, thanks mostly to solar PV upward revisions in China and India. The report states that three countries – China, India and the US – will account for two-thirds of global renewable expansion by 2022. Total solar PV capacity by then would exceed the combined total power capacities of India and Japan today.

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Meanwhile back in the real world, BP figures confirm that solar power generated 333 TWh last year, a measly 1.3% of the world’s electricity. As usual the con merchants at the IEA would like us to focus on capacity, rather then real output.

The IEA has long been no more than a puppet in hock to its political masters, but shame on the PEI for regurgitating this nonsense without doing a proper analysis themselves.