In 2023, wind and solar combined added more new energy to the global mix than any other source, for the first time in history, according to Carbon Brief analysis of newly released data.
Nevertheless, record global demand for energy saw coal and oil use also reaching new highs last year, the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2024 finds.
This pushed global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to another record in 2023, the world’s first full year with no impact from the coronavirus pandemic, the data shows.
Key figures from the report include:
- Global energy demand reached a record high of 620 exajoules (EJ) in 2023, with annual growth of 2.0%, slightly above the 1.5% per year average for the last decade.
- Wind and solar together were the largest source of new energy in 2023, adding 4.9EJ or 40% of the increase overall. The rest of the net increase came from oil (+4.8EJ, 39% of the increase), coal (+2.5EJ, 20%), nuclear (+0.4EJ, 4%) and other non-hydro renewables (+0.5EJ, 4%), while gas stayed flat and hydro declined (-0.9EJ, -8%).
- Global energy use from coal grew 1.6% year-on-year to a record high of 164EJ, passing the previous record of 162EJ, set a decade earlier in 2014.
- Global energy use from oil grew 2.5% to a record high of 196EJ, comfortably above the previous high of 193EJ set in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic.
- Global energy use from gas was unchanged at 144EJ. It has now flatlined for two years since the global energy crisis, due to Russia cutting off gas supplies to Europe.
- Global electricity generation from coal grew by 189 terawatt hours (TWh, 1.8%) year-on-year to a record high of 10,513TWh. This was despite wind and solar adding a record 537TWh of new generation, up a combined 15.7% year-on-year to 3,967TWh.
- The new highs for coal and oil use drove global emissions to another record, with releases from fossil fuel burning, industrial processes, methane and flaring topping 40bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) for the first time.
With global temperatures inching closer to the 1.5C limit, time is running out to peak and then decline emissions in order to avoid dangerous levels of warming. The new figures show the world is still going in the wrong direction, with new records for coal, oil and CO2 emissions.
Yet there are hints that, beyond today’s data for 2023, the world could be turning a corner, as emissions from China – and the global electricity system – may already have peaked.
This is the second edition of the statistical review published by the Energy Institute. Carbon Brief covered earlier editions, published by oil major BP, in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Wind and solar make history
One of the most striking details in this year’s report is that wind and solar, when combined, added more new energy to the global mix in 2023 than any other source, as shown in the figure below.
The combined 4.9EJ of new energy from wind and solar in 2023 accounted for 40% of the overall increase in global demand, ahead of oil (39%) and coal (20%).
This is the first time in history that these newer forms of renewable energy have outpaced each of the fossil fuels, which remain the world’s dominant sources of energy.
Still, the significant increases in demand for energy from oil (+4.8EJ) and coal (+2.5EJ), shown in the figure above, resulted in yet another increase in global CO2 emissions.
The drop in hydro output – also shown above – resulted from major droughts around the world in 2023, particularly in China. This shortfall was largely met by increased coal power.
Along with the continued rapid expansion of wind and solar, a recovery in hydro generation from last year’s lows is expected to contribute to a peak in emissions from the global power sector.
While global demand for oil and gas is not expected to peak until later this decade, reductions in coal use could still drive a near-term peak in global CO2 emissions.
Record highs for coal and oil
The record 4.9EJ of new energy added by wind and solar in 2023 marks a continuation of their rapid growth over the past decade, shown in the figure below.
In combination, wind and solar now contribute 37EJ to the global energy system, up 15% year-on-year. Their combined output has grown at an average 17% per year for the past decade, taking them from a total of just 8EJ in 2013 to the 2023 figure of 37EJ.
As the figure below shows, wind and solar overtook nuclear power in 2021 and, in combination, they are likely to overtake hydropower this year.
Still, it is clear from the figure that the global energy system remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
At a new record of 196EJ in 2023, oil is the world’s largest source of energy, accounting for nearly a third of the total (32%) energy mix and having grown nearly every year for the past half-century.
Coal is in second place, at 164EJ in 2023 or 26% of the mix. While this, too, marks a new record, global coal demand has been flat for the past decade. Indeed, at one point it seemed that the previous 2014 record of 162EJ might have marked a lasting peak for the fuel.
Notably, the figure above shows that global gas demand has now flatlined for the past two years. While the future trajectory for the fuel remains uncertain, this recent trend illustrates why the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in late 2022 that the “golden age of gas” had been brought to an end by the global energy crisis, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year.
In total, fossil fuels met some 81.5% of global primary energy demand in 2023, as shown in the figure below. While this is a record low, it is only around 4 percentage points lower than a decade earlier – and 5 percentage points below the level seen in 1990.
Energy Institute chief executive Nick Wayth told a pre-release press briefing that the data could be interpreted to suggest that the global energy transition “has not even started”:
“At the global level, today’s new data provides little encouragement in terms of global climate change mitigation. Clean energy is still not even meeting the entirety of demand growth and therefore at a global level not displacing fossil fuels. Arguably, the transition has not even started.”
However, this interpretation hides a “lopsided” picture for different parts of the world, Wayth said. “Fossil demand is likely to be peaking” in the major economies of Europe and the US, he explained, even as countries in the Global South are “still carbonising”.
Electricity system in flux
To date, the energy transition has had the most dramatic impact on the global electricity system, as the figure below shows. Wind and solar generation has grown from a combined 774TWh in 2013 to nearly 4,000TWh in 2023 – more than quintupling in a decade.
Together, wind and solar accounted for 13% of global electricity supplies in 2023, up from 3% a decade earlier. Still, rapidly-rising demand for electricity, which is expected to accelerate as heat, transport and industry are increasingly electrified, means that coal power reached a record high of 10,513TWh in 2023.This cements its position as the single-largest contributor to the mix.
Low-carbon sources of clean energy, including nuclear and renewables, now make up a record high 39% of global electricity supplies, ahead of coal at 35%. With gas making up a further 23% of the mix, the majority of the world’s electricity is still being generated with fossil fuels.
The expansion of wind and solar is expected to continue and even accelerate – particularly if the global goal of tripling renewable capacity by 2030 is to be met.
Combined with a recovery in global hydropower output, following a series of major droughts, this could force fossil fuel power into the beginning of structural decline in 2024.
Record CO2 emissions
Taking all of the pieces together, the record for coal and oil use along with flat demand for gas means global CO2 emissions reached a new high in 2023, the Energy Institute’s data shows. This is despite the record amounts of new energy added by wind and solar power.
In total, global emissions from fossil fuels, industrial processes, methane and flaring breached 40GtCO2e for the first time in 2023, as shown in the figure below.
China’s emissions grew by 708m tonnes of CO2e (MtCO2e, 6%) year-on-year, accounting for 85% of the net increase globally (829MtCO2e). India’s emissions also grew strongly, up 257MtCO2e (9%), while emissions in the US and EU fell by 140MtCO2 (2.7%) and 188MtCO2e (6.6%) respectively.
The Energy Institute estimate confirms earlier analysis from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) and the IEA, both of which found fossil fuel CO2 emissions had reached a new record high in 2023.
However, GCP estimates including CO2 emissions from land use change put 2023 just below the record set in 2019, with the total having been roughly flat for a decade.
Looking ahead, the key question for global emissions is whether China has already peaked and, if so, how quickly its emissions begin to fall. If it has, then it would add to continued emissions reductions in developed countries and likely outweigh increases elsewhere.
The post Analysis: Wind and solar added more to global energy than any other source in 2023 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Wind and solar added more to global energy than any other source in 2023
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.
The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.
Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.
As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.
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Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.
In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.
African control over energy resources
An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.
“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.
A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.
Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.
In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.
Nigeria to host the AEB
The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.
After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum.
Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall.
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Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”
The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The funding challenge
The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million.
The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion.
But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.
Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.
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Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.
Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued.
“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.
Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.
“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels
While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives.
Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.
The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.
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Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.
In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.
The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.
The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes
A booklet published by the UK’s opposition Conservative party includes a “cost of net-zero” that appears to have been doubled by a spreadsheet error.
The “common sense” policy document argues that “what people ultimately want is a government competent enough to solve the problems for which it takes responsibility”.
In a section that says “sophisticat[ed]…modelling” should not be a substitute for “political judgement”, the “Right Way” document disparages various estimates of the cost of net-zero.
The Conservative document then claims – incorrectly – that the government’s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), had put the cost of net-zero at close to £1tn. It says:
“In 2020, the CCC estimated that its route to net-zero would cost £957bn.”
In fact, the CCC’s 2020 estimate was exactly half this amount – £478bn – and last year it published a revised figure of £108bn, largely as a result of the falling cost of electric vehicles (EVs).
Spreadsheet error
The Conservative party’s erroneous claim appears to stem from another report that had accidentally added up numbers twice, using a