Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), announced the new target of this organization to be 18.4 terawatts (TW) of renewable energy capacity by 2035 during the International Energy Week in Singapore. La Camera stated that due to the rapid increase in global energy demand, this target needs to be updated to align with new realities.
Increasing Energy Demand and Climate Change
La Camera emphasized that while the world is moving towards achieving the target of 11.2 terawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, this amount may not be sufficient to meet global climate change goals. According to him, in the past three years, global energy and electricity demand has significantly increased, driven by higher consumption in residential heating and cooling as well as the boom in artificial intelligence.
The Director-General of IRENA noted that initial forecasts regarding global energy demand have been overly conservative, and there is a need to revise these forecasts. He said, "Demand is rapidly increasing due to changing lifestyles - more heating and more cooling."
Challenges Facing Renewable Energy
In a report released earlier this month, IRENA stated that while the development of renewable energy continues to break records and technology costs are decreasing, progress in this area remains slow and uneven. Under IRENA's revised 1.5-degree Celsius scenario, the share of electricity in global final energy consumption must increase from about 23 percent currently to 35 percent by 2035 and over 50 percent by 2050. These changes must be supported by renewable energy capacity of 18.4 terawatts by 2035 and 38.2 terawatts by 2050.
La Camera also warned that despite unprecedented growth in renewable energy capacity in 2025, the world must build more renewable energy capacity in the years 2026 to 2030 than in all previous years combined. He said, "Renewable energies can still make up the gap by 2030, but energy efficiency is declining, electricity demand is rising faster than expected, and grid infrastructure has not kept pace with the development of renewable energy."
