Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi-based International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) has been undertaking a mammoth task, named REmap, since 2013 to examine the realistic potential of renewable energy shares in the energy mix of each nation by 2030, a senior official said.
“To date, we have completed country-specific REmap analyses with the help of great leadership from each nation, for the US, China and now the UAE,” Adnan Z. Ameen, director-general of Irena, said.
He was delivering a speech at the launching ceremony of UAE’s REmap on Tuesday evening.
He said REmap was Irena’s initiative to support the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s three-tiered initiative in 2011 with the aim of providing Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) by 2030.
The three objectives in the SE4All initiative are: ensure universal access to modern energy services; double the global rate of energy efficiency improvements; and double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
REmap has taken up the third objective and started documenting how each country can get there, Ameen said.
Irena’s initial REmap report launched in June 2014 says that this doubling is possible.
The share in 2014 stood at 18 per cent. The global share can reach 30 per cent by 2030 with the renewable energy technology options identified in the study. These technologies are available and affordable.
“If we then succeed in the other SE4All objectives of doubling energy efficiency and improving energy access by that time, the global share can reach as much as 36 per cent,” Ameen said.
Increased renewable energy deployment improves human health, safeguards the environment and can reduce annual CO2 emissions by 8.6 gigatonnes by 2030.
Such emissions savings, combined with energy efficiency gains, would be sufficient to set the world on a path to preventing catastrophic climate change.
And better still, renewables are great for the global economy. A doubling of the global renewable energy share will create more jobs and spread economic wealth, as well as improving the energy security of every country, Ameen said.
The potential for greater renewable energy shares in the total energy mix exists in all countries.
They can reach 62 per cent in the energy mix of Denmark, for example, or 56 per cent in Brazil. India and China, the world’s fastest-growing economies, can reach shares of around 25 per cent or more [by 2030], Ameen said.
