Renewables will provide half of the worlds electricity by 2030

This is according to a report from International Energy Agency, the global energy watchdog, who predicted renewables would provide half of the world’s electricity by 2030.

The report, released today, states that the world is on an “unstoppable” shift towards renewable energy but the phase down of fossil fuels is not happening quickly enough, warning that emissions are still too high to prevent temperatures rising above the key threshold of 1.5C.

Although the report said that investment in fossil fuels needed to be cut in half, it also praised the significant progress countries had made in expanding renewable energy and supporting consumers with the shift to electric vehicles and heat pumps instead of gas boilers.

A great example of this shift is to do with the marked adoption of EV’s. In 2020, one in 25 cars sold was electric. Just three years later this number has risen to one in five.

International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol stated “The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it’s unstoppable. It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ – and the sooner the better for all of us”.

The report recognised that oil and gas would continue to play a role in the world’s economy and that maintaining investment was “essential”. But it said at the moment, current levels of funding were double what they should be.

“Governments, companies and investors need to get behind clean energy transitions rather than hindering them,” Mr Birol said.

At the time of writing on 24/10/2023, for the last reported half hourly period between 11am and 11.30am, the current demand for electricity in the UK is 36.46 GW.

For this half hourly period 16.34 GW’s (44.44%) of electricity is currently being generated using gas. The next biggest contributor is wind at 5.8 GW’s (15.77%).

This landscape will change as we onboard more renewable sources and the gas for power % will drop significantly. This will happen in the years to come but in the meantime we remain very open to worldwide supply and demand dynamics as we all compete for the same gas imports.

This means that we will unfortunately experience extreme levels of price volatility for years to come.

For this reason, we really recommend tracking the latest wholesale price trends if you are in the window to make a decision on your next business electricity or business gas contract.