New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Hydropower can enable our net zero ambitions, but we need to act now
7/9/2022
5 min read
Feature
The world’s largest source of renewable energy and the provider of 94% of global energy storage, hydropower is enabling the rapid growth of wind and solar. But development is slow and governments need to do more in order to realise our net zero ambitions, writes Eddie Rich, CEO of the International Hydropower Association (IHA).
More than a year has passed since Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), described hydropower as the ‘forgotten giant of clean electricity’. His comments came as a new net zero by 2050 roadmap warned that our climate targets would only be possible with a doubling of hydropower globally.
Why then, are we still not seeing governments step up to the task? There has been a lot of energy-related talk over the last 12 months, and hydropower, with its flexibility and dispatchability, is ready to fill the hole left by coal. But as we approach the COP27 United Nations climate summit in Egypt, there is little progress to show since world leaders formalised the need to transition away from coal in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
The IEA’s roadmap made it clear that we cannot wait to act. Drawing upon extensive data, it projected that hydropower development in the 2020s is set to grow 25% slower than the previous decade. According to the roadmap, unless hydropower grows at least twice as fast as forecast through 2030, we will fall drastically behind the course for net zero by 2050.