Chart: 85% of new electricity built in 2023 came from renewables

Renewable energy still supplies less of the world’s electricity than fossil fuels do, but it’s being built at a rate that far outpaces the construction of non-renewable forms of energy.

Last year, renewables accounted for nearly 86 percent of new electricity capacity worldwide, according to new data from the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Electricity supplied by renewables, like hydropower, solar, and wind, has increased gradually over the past few decades — but rapidly in recent years. A whopping 473 gigawatts of renewable capacity was installed last year, up from 308 GW the year before and nearly double the amount in 2021.

Since 2010, most of this capacity growth has come from the buildout of wind and solar power, the latter in particular. Nearly 346 GW of solar capacity was installed last year alone, accounting for about 63 percent of all the capacity added in 2023.

Because so many renewable energy facilities were built last year, far more than in any other year, clean energy now makes up around 43 percent of global electricity capacity. In terms of generation — the actual power produced by energy sources — renewables were responsible for 30 percent of electricity production last year.

Along with the rise of renewable sources has come a slowdown in construction of non-renewable power plants as well as a move to decommission more fossil fuel facilities. In the U.S., for example, coal and natural gas plants accounted for 98 percent of energy capacity retirements in 2023, per the Energy Information Administration.

Still, clean electricity sources are not on track to reach the goal set out at COP28 to triple renewable capacity globally by 2030. Renewable capacity needs to grow by 16.1 percent every year in order to hit that climate target; last year it rose by 14 percent.

But there is still some time to catch up. In the U.S., tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act are already boosting renewable production. And trends point to renewable prices continuing to fall — good news if the world is going to achieve the blistering pace of renewable construction necessary to slash emissions from the power grid.