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The Great Green Wall initiative uses an integrated approach to restore a diversity of ecosystems in the North African landscape.

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The Great Green Wall is an African-led movement with an epic ambition to grow an 8,000km natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa.

A decade in and roughly 15% underway, the initiative is already bringing life back to Africa's degraded landscapes at an unprecedented scale, providing food security, jobs and a reason to stay for the millions who live along its path.

The Wall promises to be a compelling solution to the many urgent threats not only facing the African Continent, but the global community as a whole - notably climate change, drought, famine, conflict and migration.

Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, 3 times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Green Wall is taking root in Africa's Sahel region, at the southern edge of the Sahara desert - one of the poorest places on the planet.

More than anywhere else on Earth, the Sahel is on the frontline of climate change and millions of locals are already facing its devastating impact. Persistent droughts, lack of food, conflicts over dwindling natural resources, and mass migration to Europe are just some of the many consequences.

Yet, communities from Senegal in the West to Djibouti in the East are fighting back.

Since the birth of the initiative in 2007, life has started coming back to the land, bringing improved food security, jobs and stability to people's lives.

The Great Green Wall isn't just for the Sahel. It is a global symbol for humanity overcoming its biggest threat - our rapidly degrading environment.

It shows that if we can work with nature, even in challenging places like the Sahel, we can overcome adversity, and build a better world for generations to come.

More than just growing trees and plants, the Great Green Wall is transforming
the lives of millions of people in the Sahel region.

The Great Green Wall makes a vital contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (known as the SDGs)
- a global agenda which aims to achieve a more equitable and sustainable world by 2030.

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Great Green Wall - The Great Green Wall Initiative

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The Great Green Wall Initiative of the Sahara and the Sahel is Africa's Flagship programme including a mosaic of land-based projects leveraging the land-water-energy Nexus for restored land, carbon capture and more green jobs in the Sahel for Youth and Women.

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Contents1 Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming: Feeding the Cities of the Future1.1 Introduction2 Historical Background3 Key Concepts and Definitions4 Main Discussion Points4.1 Benefits of urban agriculture and vertical farming:4.2 Environmental sustainability of urban agriculture and vertical farming:4.3 Social and economic impacts of urban agriculture and vertical farming:5 Case Studies or Examples6 Current Trends or Developments7

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Seven reasons why urban vertical farming is the future

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Urban vertical farming offers pesticide-free produce, maximizes space, reduces environmental impact, supports local economies, and ensures

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We develop and scale technologies to rid the oceans of plastic

Our cleaning technologies are deployed around the world as we conduct the largest cleanup in history. For over ten years, The Ocean Cleanup has been researching, extracting, and monitoring plastic pollution in oceans and rivers globally - with millions of kilograms removed to date.

A planet-sized problem

Trillions of pieces of plastic pollute our oceans today, and the problem is worsening. This plastic has a devastating impact on marine wildlife and ecosystems. Plastics can persist for many decades, continuously degrading into microplastics. These can be ingested by wildlife and later enter the human food chain. Plastic pollution is a global crisis requiring urgent action.

We aim to clean up 90% of floating ocean plastic pollution

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. To achieve this objective, we use a dual strategy: intercepting plastic in rivers to cut the inflow of pollution, and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean and won't go away by itself. When the oceans are clean, we can put ourselves out of business.

The Ocean Cleanup is cleaning up floating plastics caught swirling in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a plastic accumulation zone with over 100,000,000 kilograms of plastic.

Learn more

To clean the oceans, we also need to stop new trash from flowing into them. By tackling 1000 rivers around the world, we can halt 80% of riverine pollution reaching our oceans.

Learn more

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The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. We aim to remove 90% of the floating plastic with the help of ocean cleanup systems and river interception technologies.

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How Do We Clean Up All That Ocean Plastic?

There are currently 75 to 199 million tons of plastic polluting our oceans, according to the World Economic Forum. This is a result of humans recycling only nine percent of plastic waste and dumping 10 million tons of it into the seas each year.

If we continue on this path, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean could triple by 2040 as plastic production continues to increase. Marine plastic pollution may be costing the world economy trillions of dollars every year because it affects fisheries, coastlines, tourism, marine life, and the food we eat.

Some ocean plastic ends up in one of five major gyres, systems of ocean currents that corral marine garbage into their vortexes.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest gyre, located between Hawaii and California, covers 1.6 million square kilometers, an area twice as big as Texas. It's estimated that it contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing almost 90,000 tons. While there are many identifiable floating items in the gyre-macroplastics such as cigarette butts, plastic bags, food containers, laundry baskets, plastic bottles, medical waste, fishing gear, and more-most of the plastic is the size of pepper flakes or smaller, broken down by the sun and waves over the years.

Despite the fact that the majority of large plastic pieces are spread out across the vastness of the oceans and the rest may be too small to collect, there are a number of organizations attempting to clean up the oceans.

Collecting plastic from the oceans

The most high-profile effort to clean up ocean plastic is being conducted by Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit whose goal is to get rid of 90 percent of floating plastic pollution in the ocean. Its first collection system proved ineffective when plastic garbage was able to escape its barriers and a part broke off due to the winds and waves. Its more successful current iteration has removed 220,000 pounds of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Ocean Cleanup's system consists of a large floating net-like barrier three meters deep that forms a large U shape which is slowly towed by two ships. The natural flow caused by the movement directs plastic to the central retention zone. Once a week, the two vessels come together to close the barriers, pick up the retention zone, and empty the plastic out onto one of their decks. There it's separated into different recycling streams, packaged, and sent to recycling facilities onshore. The organization's System 03 is in the works; it's three times bigger and will reduce the cost per kilogram of plastic collected.

While Ocean Cleanup has received a lot of attention for its efforts, some marine biologists believe its methods could actually do more harm than good. They point to the fossil fuel-powered ships towing the barriers that emit 660 tons of carbon dioxide per month of cleanup. Ocean Cleanup says it offsets its emissions and that it is experimenting with biofuels.

Several ocean plastic experts are also worried that Ocean Cleanup's system will harm marine life and could kill creatures even if they are returned to the ocean. Ocean Cleanup counters that fish can escape its system. In addition, there are breathing ports for mammals, birds, or turtles that get caught in the retention zone, underwater cameras to ensure that marine life doesn't get entangled, and a remote-controlled trigger release which opens one end of the retention zone if a creature is trapped. Protected species observers are always onboard to monitor and document all animals.

Another concern is that Ocean Cleanup's system could harm a little understood ecosystem called neuston-comprising insects, worms, snails, nudibranchs, crabs, sea anemones and more that float on the ocean surface much like the plastic-before scientists have even had sufficient time to study it.

Other critics say that Ocean Cleanup's technique cannot get rid of the microplastics, and some believe lower tech strategies like beach cleanups are more effective because they prevent plastics from reaching the ocean in the first place.

Plastic on the beaches

While much of the plastic floating around in the gyres has been found to be decades old, it turns out that more of the recently produced plastic stays near shorelines. One study found that, for the first five years after entering the ocean from land, 77 percent of plastic remained on beaches or floated in coastal waters. According to Utrecht University oceanographer Erik van Sebille, most plastic in the ocean remains within 100 miles of the shore between the coastline and ocean, washing back and forth and scraping on the sand-a process that eventually breaks it down into microplastics.This means that beach cleanups may be one of the most effective ways of dealing with ocean plastics and microplastics.

A number of organizations regularly arrange beach cleanups for volunteers: The Ocean Conservancy, Surfrider Foundation, American Littoral Society, and Ocean Blue Project, to name a few.

Cleaning up rivers

Most plastic enters the ocean from rivers.

Scientists have found that 1,000 rivers around the world are responsible for 80 percent of the plastic in rivers that ends up in the ocean.

Ocean Cleanup also has river cleanup technology called Interceptors, solar-powered catamaran-like vessels that are put into the mouth of polluted rivers. As the water flows, trash is guided by a barrier onto the Interceptor's conveyor belt which dumps it into a shuttle; the shuttle carries the trash to dumpsters on a barge that are brought to the riverside and emptied. The trash is sent to a waste management facility. So far, eight Interceptors have removed over 2.2 million pounds of trash from rivers in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.

In Baltimore Harbor, Mr. Trash Wheel catches plastic pollution from a local river. Its containment booms direct trash flowing down the river into its mouth where a rake lifts it onto a conveyor belt. The trash is dropped into a dumpster on a separate barge at the top of the belt, and eventually incinerated for electricity. A giant water wheel powers the rake and conveyor belt, but if the current isn't strong enough, solar power is used to pump water onto the wheel to keep it going. Four trash wheels currently working in Baltimore have picked up 2,000 tons of trash including 1.5 million plastic bottles, 1.4 million foam containers, and 12.6 million cigarette butts. Trash wheels are being planned for Texas, California, and Panama.

AlphaMERS, an Indian company, makes stainless steel mesh fences that block river trash. They are strong enough to withstand fast currents that might overwhelm barriers. The angle of the barriers directs trash towards the shore where it is collected. Thirty-four fences are currently installed in eight Indian cities.

This year, a Dutch startup installed its first Bubble Barrier in an Amsterdam canal. A perforated tube placed diagonally at the bottom of a river pumps out air, generating a bubble curtain. The pump is powered by renewable energy if possible.

When the river current meets the bubble barrier, plastic waste is pushed to the side and into a catchment system. The technology enables ships and migrating fish to easily pass through the bubbles. A Bubble Barrier in Katwijk, Netherlands prevents plastics from reaching the North Sea, and others are being planned for Portugal and Southeast Asia.

Where is the rest of the ocean plastic?

Van Sebille's research estimated that there are 276,000 tons of small floating plastic on the surface of the ocean. But scientists believe that between 5.3 to 14 million tons of plastic entered the oceans in 2010 alone. If what is found floating on the ocean surface represents only one percent of the plastic that ends up in the ocean each year, where is the rest of it?

Microplastics

Scientists think that the ocean contains 24.4 trillion pieces of microplastics - fragments of plastic less than five millimeters in length, or about the size of a sesame seed - weighing between 82,000 and 578,000 tons. There is likely more. Most microplastics come from synthetic clothing, personal care products, tires, city dust, and from the breakdown of plastic debris. Current technology is not able to filter them out at sewage treatment plants, so most of it washes out to sea and ends up in the ocean or in the sediment.

A sediment sample taken off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA showed the contents of the sediment from 1870 to 2009. In the layers representing 1945 to 2009, researchers found plastic fibers one millimeter or smaller in size. As the years went on, the amount doubled every 15 years-an increase that reflects the actual rate of global plastic production. Australian researchers analyzing ocean sediments estimated that almost 15.5 million tons of microplastics now exist on the ocean floor.

Marine animals eat microplastics, which means they also ingest the toxic chemicals that were added to make the original plastic product flexible, colorful, waterproof, or flame resistant. Microplastics can also absorb other toxic chemicals and carry harmful bacteria. They have been shown to harm marine life by disrupting reproductive systems, stunting growth, and causing tissue inflammation and liver damage.

Because microplastics have been found in all marine life-even in the guts of tiny crustaceans in the ocean's deepest trenches-they are part of the food chain and are also consumed by humans. Microplastics have already been found in human blood, feces, and in the placentas of unborn babies, but so far there have been no large definitive studies on how microplastics harm human health.

Beizhan Yan is a Lamont Associate Research Professor at Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, where he specializes in plastic pollution. He is collaborating with researchers from the Columbia Chemistry Department and the Mailman School of Public Health to examine the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics (tiny pieces less than one micron in size) in humans-what exposure levels people have, how the plastic particles get into the blood, whether microplastics are transported to the organs, and whether they are able to cause adverse health effects.

Yan is also working with Riverkeeper, Philip Orton from Stevens Institute of Technology, and his colleague Joaquim Goes at Lamont to study the sources and environmental fate of microplastics in NYC waterways. Cleaning up microplastics while also protecting ecosystems will not be easy.

Yan said, "Those tiny microplastics coexist with many other minerals and fine particles, like silt, clay, plant debris, and black carbon-all sorts of other particles, whether natural or anthropogenic. They have a similar size and density, so it's difficult to efficiently separate microplastics from other particles. In terms of concentration or mass, the microplastics are probably less than 0.1 percent of the total mass of these particles." He believes that in the future, researchers may develop technology to separate the elements out efficiently, but today it does not exist.

There are, however, ongoing efforts to deal with microplastics. NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System can help track microplastics as they move by analyzing where the ocean surface is smoother and thus likely to have more microplastics. This enables organizations attempting to clean up microplastics to identify the areas of greatest density.

Numerous experiments are being conducted to capture microplastics. Wasser 3.0, a German company, uses a special non-toxic compound which, when circulated in a vortex, pulls microplastics into popcorn-like clumps that can then be collected. The technique could be used in sewage treatment plants or industrial processes. It is already being used in a paper processing plant and a wastewater treatment plant in Landau-Mörlheim where it has removed 600 pounds of microplastics.

Some scientists discovered enzymes that can break down polyester. Researchers from Hong Kong Polytechnic University devised a sticky biofilm from a bacterium that can incorporate microplastics. At the University of Adelaide, scientists created spring-shaped carbon nanotube magnets that grab microplastics and break them down into harmless water-soluble pieces. And a chemistry student in the Netherlands invented a device where microplastics attach themselves to a magnetic liquid; the contents can then be removed with a magnet, leaving only water behind.

Yan contends that the most cost-effective way to deal with plastic pollution, however, is to control its sources. For example, sewage is one of the primary sources of microplastics, though microplastics originate from the products people use. Studies show that most of the microplastics in sewage effluent are microfibers that come from laundry -washing machines and driers. Yan's study of New York City waters found that more than 90 percent of the microplastics greater than 0.2 millimeters were microfibers shed from clothing, transported by the wastewater of washing machines. With more and more people dressing in clothes made from synthetics that shed microfibers, it's unlikely that the fashion business will stop using these materials, so microfibers must somehow be prevented from getting into the sewage system to begin with. Yan and researchers from SUNY Stony Brook and North Carolina State University are proposing a study to NOAA to develop advanced filtration techniques that can capture microplastics and fibers from the laundry and repurpose them into new fibers for use in the fashion industry.

Plastic on the seafloor

In addition to the microplastics accumulating in sediments, larger plastic also sinks to the seafloor. One study found that 50 percent of the plastic in landfills is denser than seawater, which means these objects may sink on their own. The other 50 percent can be colonized by barnacles and other organisms over time, making them heavier than seawater, so eventually they sink as well.

An image that has become iconic is that of the plastic bag found in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the ocean, 36,000 feet below sea level in the Pacific Ocean. Other single-use plastics have also been found on the ocean floor and while there have been a few limited estimates of how much plastic resides in certain areas, there is no data for most areas of the overall seafloor.

According to Yan, the two fundamental questions about plastics on the ocean floor are: where are the macroplastics, and are they causing trouble?

"The scientific community can use models to figure out where most of these plastics are, because we don't know right now," he said. But cleaning up the plastics on the ocean floor is challenging because they settle so deep, and a cleanup would be very costly. Another concern is that plastics on the ocean bottom become part of the ecosystem. "Some of the animals use the plastics and live with them," Yan said. "How do you do a cleanup without interfering with the ecosystems of those animals?"

Yan believes that scientists may eventually develop an underwater drone that can identify macroplastics and gather them from the ocean bottom. However, this would be expensive because of the need to lower the drones, pick up the macroplastics and bring them to shore, and possibly the need for trained pilots to operate the drones.

Reducing ocean plastic

While cleanup technologies have a role to play in cleaning up ocean plastic, no single solution can effectively reduce ocean plastic. What is required is fundamental and systemic change that includes the banning of single-use plastics in favor of products designed to be recycled or repaired, and more recycling infrastructure. Breaking the Plastic Wave, a Pew Report, identified the measures which, if implemented, could cut annual dumping of plastic into the ocean by 80 percent in 20 years. These include reducing plastic consumption, substituting plastic with compostable materials, designing products and packaging with recycling in mind, increasing recycling, proper disposal of plastics that can't be recycled, and reducing the export of waste.

"To me, plastic is still a good thing," said Yan. "With it, you use less steel, wood, and other resources. But the only way to correctly use it is to recycle it, reuse it, and repurpose it, rather than discard it in the environment. Pathetically, less than 10 percent of plastics are recycled right now. We should actively research affordable solutions to prevent plastics from getting into the environment."

Towards that end, Yan is the director of the Plastic Pollution Analysis and Sustainable Solutions Network recently funded by the Columbia Climate School, bringing together more than 30 researchers working in environmental law, engineering, life cycle analysis, environmental health, and more.

"I think that for human beings, plastic pollution is the biggest pollution issue right now in terms of the total amount of the pollutants being generated, and how challenging it is to deal with," said Yan. "But if we work together, we can solve these issues in the future."

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How Do We Clean Up All That Ocean Plastic?

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There are currently 75 to 199 million tons of plastic polluting our oceans, according to the World Economic Forum. This is a result of humans recycling only nine percent of plastic waste and dumping 10 million tons of it into the seas each year.

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In June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the production and sale of chicken meat by two companies- Upside Foods and Good Meat-who will each initially partner with a restaurant (Upside with Bar Crenn in San Francisco, and Good Meat with José Andrés' China Chilcano in the nation's capital) with the hope of ultimately marketing other lab-grown meats and making them all available in supermarkets and restaurants.

The USDA decision makes the United States the second country, after Singapore, to legalize what its backers call cultivated or cultured meat, a significant boost to an industry that just a decade ago was purely science fiction. Today, it's being developed by upwards of 150 companies to the tune of $896 million in investment in 2022 alone.

But what is cultured meat, and why are so many people so interested in it?

How is cultured meat made?

Cultured meat is "taking cells from animals that normally produce meat for us and using those cells as the powerhouse to grow the meat outside of the animal," explains David Kaplan, director of the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture.

Adds Claire Bomkamp, lead scientist for cultivated meat and seafood with the Good Food Institute, it is "the same thing as traditional meat" but with "the animal taken out of the equation."

The first step to creating cultured meat is to procure animal cells, often via biopsy from an animal-either living or recently slaughtered-or by extracting cells from a fertilized egg. These cells are placed in culture media to encourage them to multiply; but if you're imagining a bunch of scientists hunched over petri dishes, think bigger.

"Picture something more like brewing beer," suggests Kaplan; "you're talking scales that are very, very large."

These cells may be stem cells, with the ability to develop into almost any part of an animal; others may be what are known as satellite cells, which regenerate and repair muscles. Some cells can reproduce perhaps 30-50 times before a new biopsy is required. The Holy Grail, which Kaplan and others are developing, is "immortalized" cells, which either through genetic manipulation or mutation are able to proliferate indefinitely without needing further fresh animal tissue.

The result, in theory, is a product that looks, smells, tastes, and feels like the meat you're used to consuming-in endless supply.

If you find the idea of eating meat grown in a lab a dubious proposition, don't worry; you're not alone.

"I mean, I was definitely skeptical when I first heard of it," admits Bomkamp. "I was working in a cell culture lab at the time and l thought, 'You want me to eat the cells? No thanks.' I thought about it more, and then I realized it was something that could have a lot of benefits."

The case for cultured meat

Worldwide, an estimated 70 billion land animals are slaughtered for food each year-the total significantly skewed by chickens, which account for the great majority. (Approximately 300 million cattle are killed annually.) Eighty percent of sows raised in pork production in the United States live their lives in tiny gestation crates too small for them to even turn around.

The environmental impact of feeding all those animals can be enormous. Sixty-seven percent of crops grown in the U.S. each year do not directly feed people but are fed to livestock -acres upon acres of land set side to grow food to feed to our food. Agricultural pollution can affect surface water and groundwater; and animal agriculture is responsible for 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In theory, cultured meat could solve many or all those problems; and advocates tout other potential benefits.

Kaplan, for example, points out that because cultured meat can theoretically be grown anywhere, countries would no longer have to import as much food.

Plus, "because the technology allows much more control of the inputs and outputs, you could, for example, have fat cells with a healthier fatty acid composition, and you can reduce the use of antibiotics and other chemicals in food," he says.

Bomkamp notes that meat consumption could become far more varied the meats commonly eaten today-"we could eat things that aren't common today, because they're not practical to farm," she observes-and cultured meat could also allow the consumption of, for example, bluefin tuna without depleting wild populations.

Is there a downside to lab meat?

If all this seems too good to be true, critics argue that it is.

Marco Springmann, an environmental scientist at the University of Oxford told CNBCthat the amount of energy required for the production process is so great that cultured meat has five times the carbon footprint of chicken. Religious scholars are still wrestling with the issue of whether cultured meat can ever truly be halal or kosher. And plenty of vegans, who might be expected to be a key constituency, have ethical objections.

On a practical level, taste and smell are reportedly all but indistinguishable from the real thing, but there remain some kinks in getting the texture just right.

Lab-grown meat is also expensive. Per-unit costs are presently significantly higher than the traditional alternative- according to one analysis, lab-grown beef may be eight times as expensive to produce-although they have plummeted since the first lab-grown burger a decade ago.

Kaplan, however, is relatively unconcerned by the cost issue, confident that it will decrease as the industry develops. The biggest practical challenge right now, he says, is how to produce enough product to stock restaurant kitchens and grocery aisles.

"I think no one on the planet has ever dealt with scaling this kind of biological technology," he says. "We need really creative new solutions to get to the scales that are required."

Bomkamp is passionate about the budding industry's potential and thinks the more people actually try lab-grown meat, the more normal it will feel.

"Maybe at first people will think about trying cultivated chicken as this crazy experience, and certainly the media has made it sound like this weird new science-y thing," she says. "But ultimately, it's just chicken."

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What exactly is lab-grown meat? Here's what you need to know.

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It's "the same thing as traditional meat," scientists say, but with "the animal taken out of the equation."

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Meat without slaughter: Here's everything you need to know about lab-grown meat | CNN Business

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Soon, Americans are going to be able to try chicken that comes directly from chicken cells rather than, well, a chicken.

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The acceleration in clean, renewable energy power generation comes not a moment too soon for policy-makers concerned with climate change.

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A boom in Chinese solar power construction drove another record-breaking year of renewables growth in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Carbon Brief analysis of figures in the IEA's Renewables 2023 report show that the world is now on track to build enough solar, wind and other renewables over the next five years to power the equivalent of the US and Canada.

Rapid growth has also pushed the IEA to once again significantly upgrade its renewables forecast, adding an extra 728 gigawatts (GW) of capacity to a five-year estimate it made just a year ago. This is more than the electricity capacity of Germany and India combined.

The agency attributes this growth to plummeting costs of solar power and favourable policy regimes, particularly in China. New solar and onshore wind now provide cheaper electricity than new fossil fuel power plants almost everywhere, it says, as well as being cheaper than most existing fossil fuel assets.

Despite such accelerated expansion, the world is not currently on track to achieve the COP28 target of tripling renewables capacity by 2030, according to the IEA.

However, it proposes various measures to further increase deployment, including more finance for developing countries.

'Step change'

Last year was a "step change for renewable power growth" as the world built an extra 507GW of renewable capacity, primarily solar and wind power, according to the IEA.

This was a 49% increase on the previous year's construction. It marked the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity addition reached record levels.

Over the six-year period 2023-2028, an additional 3,684GW of renewables is expected to come online under the IEA's "main" forecast. This is double the current total of renewable capacity installed globally.

In 2023, solar power both at utility-scale and on rooftops amounted to three-quarters of capacity additions, primarily due to growth in China. Over the next five years, 73% of the 3,174GW of new capacity will be solar, again driven largely by China. (See: China leads.)

By Carbon Brief's calculations, this 2024-2028 period is on track to see an extra 4,963 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity generation from renewable sources.

This amounts to one-sixth of the world's electricity output in 2022. As the chart below shows, this is equivalent to covering the entire electricity demand of the US and Canada with newly-built renewables.

By 2028, the IEA forecasts that renewables will account for 42% of global electricity generation, with wind and solar power making up 25%. Despite showing no growth across this period, hydropower is still expected to be the largest single source of renewable power.

Taken together, the agency says renewables will overtake coal power as the largest source of power in "early 2025". (A year ago, the agency said renewables would become the world's largest electricity source within three years.)

One major driver of this growth is the plummeting cost of renewables, especially solar photovoltaics (PV). Spot prices for solar modules declined by almost 50% in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to the IEA.

Last year, 96% of newly installed utility-scale solar and onshore wind capacity generated cheaper electricity than new coal and gas plants, according to the IEA.

Moreover, three-quarters of new wind and solar power plants provided cheaper power than even existing fossil-fuel facilities.

The other key driver is the strong policy support that renewables enjoy in "more than 130 countries", the IEA says. It notes that "policies remain key for attracting investment and enabling deployment", with roughly 87% of the utility-scale renewable growth between 2023 and 2028 "expected to be stimulated by policy schemes".

At the same time, the report highlights the impact of the "new macroeconomic environment" on the renewables sector, with inflation and high interest rates raising costs. Offshore wind has been hardest hit, with the IEA's forecast for its growth outside China dropping by 15%.

The report also examines renewable heat consumption and the use of biofuels. Both are set to grow considerably in the coming years, but the IEA says neither are currently on track for the trajectories seen in its net-zero scenario, which aligns with the Paris Agreement.

Record revision

As a result of this growth, the IEA has again significantly raised its forecast for renewables capacity expansion, by a record amount.

It now sees an additional 728GW being built in the 2023-2027 period compared to its forecast from 2022 - a 33% increase. This is notable considering that, last year, the agency described a five-year 424GW adjustment as its "largest ever upward revision".

The chart below shows the 120GW divergence between actual renewables growth in 2023 - some 507GW - and the forecast for that year of 387GW, made by the IEA in 2022.

The IEA has a long history of making relatively conservative predictions for renewable growth that are subsequently outstripped by reality, due to a combination of more favourable policy conditions and faster-than-expected cost reductions.

Forecasts from previous IEA renewables reports issued in 2020 and 2021 showed annual renewable growth rates remaining fairly stable at around 200GW and 300GW per year for the following five years, respectively.

However, these forecasts have not been included in the chart above as, for the first time, the agency has converted all of its solar power values to direct current, resulting in slightly different GW values. This means previous forecasts are not directly comparable, although the 2022 forecast figures have been converted for this purpose.

China leads

A key conclusion from the IEA's new report is the global dominance of China in deploying solar and other renewables, which is set to increase in the coming years.

In the period 2005-2010, China built 39% of the world's new renewable energy capacity. This increased to 47% in the 2017-2022 period and the IEA expects it to rise to 59% between 2023 and 2028. This can be seen in the chart below.

By 2028, the agency estimates that nearly half of China's electricity will be generated by renewables. According to Ember, as of 2022 only around 30% of China's electricity was from renewables.

During this period, the nation is set to deploy four times more renewables than the EU and five times more than the US.

This growth is being driven by the nation's success in solar power manufacture and installation, according to the IEA. In "almost all provinces", generation costs for new utility-scale solar and onshore wind are now lower than for coal, which is generally used as the benchmark for electricity prices, the agency says.

The IEA attributes this progress to policy measures, including power market reforms, green certificate systems and province-level financial support to support rooftop solar installation. It also points to a "supply glut" that has helped solar module costs "plummet drastically".

As China accounts for 90% of the upwards revision in the IEA's forecast out to 2028, it notes that the nation's solar achievements actually "hide slower progress in other countries".

There have been a number of significant supportive policy changes in other countries and regions, however.

The US and the EU are expected to see renewable installation rates double across 2023-2028, compared to the previous six-year period - in both cases due primarily to solar expansion. The IEA attributes this to the US Inflation Reduction Act and supportive national policies - such as government renewable power auctions - across European nations.

The report also highlights the success of supportive policies in India and Brazil. It notes that while renewables are set to expand rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa - particularly South Africa - the region "still underperforms considering its resource potential and electrification needs".

Tripling renewables

At COP28, nearly every government in the world agreed to a target of tripling global renewables capacity by 2030. This would bring the total to 11,000GW, which is in line with the IEA's own net-zero scenario.

As it stands, the new report concludes that under the IEA's "main case" forecast, shown in yellow in the chart below, renewable capacity would increase to 7,339GW in 2028.

Following that trajectory, capacity would reach around 9,000GW in 2030 - roughly an increase to 2.5 times current levels.

This forecast is based on existing policies and takes into account "country-specific challenges that hamper faster renewable energy expansion", the IEA says.

By contrast, the IEA's "accelerated case" involves governments "overcom[ing] these challenges and implement[ing] existing policies more quickly".

In this scenario, shown in red below, renewables growth is around 21% higher. Capacity increases to 8,130GW in 2028, putting the world on track for the tripling by 2030 target.

The IEA lists a handful of broad measures that governments could take to achieve an "accelerated" trajectory.

These include: improved policy responses to the "new macroeconomic environment" such as higher inflation; more investment in grid infrastructure; and dealing with "cumbersome administrative barriers and permitting procedures and social acceptance issues".

The IEA notes that "the lack of affordable financing remains the most important challenge to renewable project development in most EMDEs [emerging markets and developing economies], especially in countries where renewable policy uncertainties also increase project risk premiums".

It emphasises the need to boost financing for EMDEs to overcome this barrier. Last year, renewable growth was concentrated in just 10 nations and tripling renewables requires "a much faster deployment rate...in numerous other nations", the IEA says.

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Analysis: World will add enough renewables in five years to power US and Canada - Carbon Brief

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A boom in Chinese solar power construction drove another record-breaking year of renewables growth in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.