Global renewables report card

The sun doesn always shine, the wind doesn keep blowing. Luckily, it is less the case in Pakistan. But unfortunately, little does the country use it as a source of energy and particularly electricity. While some activity in the sector has recently picked up, a look at whats happening around the world in the renewable energy sector will be a crude reminder for the policymakers of the need to up their ante.
The latest word from Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) is that renewable energy has continued to expand across the globe in 2013, increasing by more than eight percent and meeting almost one-fifth of the worlds final energy consumption. And within this, the Renewable 2014 Global Status Report highlights renewable energy policy mechanisms of developing countries as the main drivers of growth lately.
The study finds that the most significant growth of renewable occurred in the power sector, where the global capacities increased by eight percent year on year in 2013 to 1,560GW. Of this, hydropower surged by four percent to 100GW, while the other renewable that include wind, solar and biomass jointly jumped by 17 percent year on year to 560GW.
Interestingly, solar PV additions overtook the wind energy capacity additions in 2013, making one third of the total new capacity. A trend that has been witnessed over the past few years has been the reduction in the levelised costs of electricity generation from solar PV and onshore wind, which has resulted in major commercial and industrial customers to move towards renewable.
There has been a marked shift in the how emerging economies have made move towards supportive policies--the number of such developing countries has increased six fold in last eight years--from 15 emerging economies to 95 in 2013. Also, the study reveals an increase in revisions to existing policies and target as countries became more proactive. These changes include attempts made to curb costs associated with supporting the deployment of renewable, expansion in current targets and some retroactive changes.
An important feature of the global renewable canvas emphasised in the study is the declining investment in the sector. Global renewable investments declined for the second year partly due to the uncertainty over incentive policies in Europe and the United States and reductions in support policies in some countries, and partly due to sharp reductions in technology costs.