The “beginning of the end” of the era of fossil energy carriers has been announced: what will replace oil and gas

Focused on wind and solar energy

Fossil fuels are “beginning of the end” as global wind and solar energy hit record levels in 2022, according to a new study.

The boom in wind and solar energy has seen the amount of electricity generated from renewable energy sources reach record levels last year, according to a new analysis.

As CNN notes, according to a report released on Wednesday by energy think tank Ember, the use of coal, oil and gas for power generation is expected to decline in 2023. This will be the first year that there will be a reduction in the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation, barring a global recession or pandemic.

The levels of planetary pollution from heating from fossil fuel power generation may have already peaked, according to the report.

The findings show that the world has reached “the beginning of the end of the fossil energy era,” Malgorzata Viatros-Motyka, lead author of the study, said in a statement. “We are entering a clean energy era,” she added.

Think tank Ember analyzed data from 78 countries, which account for 93% of global electricity demand, for the fourth edition of its annual Global Electricity Survey.

Nearly 40% of the world’s electricity is now generated from renewable sources and nuclear power, a new record, according to the report.

The share of wind and solar energy in global energy production in 2022 was 12%, compared with 10% a year earlier, according to CNN.

Solar turned out to be the fastest growing source of electricity in 2022 for the eighteenth consecutive year, up 24% from the previous year. Wind power generation increased by 17%.

Analysts at the Ember Center predict that in 2023, clean energy will be able to meet the overall growth in electricity demand.

However, fossil fuels still dominate, CNN notes. Coal power remained the single largest source of electricity worldwide, accounting for 36% of global electricity generation in 2022. According to Viatros-Motyka, this is due to the fact that the overall demand for electricity has grown, and not all of it has been met by renewable sources.

But Ember predicts that 2022 will mark the “peak” of the planet’s pollution from electricity generation and be the last year of growth in fossil fuel use.

The report forecasts a slight decline in fossil fuel generation of 0.3% in 2023, with a larger fall in subsequent years as wind and solar use rise.

“For the wind and the sun, conditions have been created for a rapid rise to the top,” says Malgorzata Viatros-Motyka. “A new era of reducing fossil fuel emissions means that coal power will be phased out and the end of gas power growth is just around the corner. Change is happening fast. However, it all depends on the actions now being taken by governments, businesses and citizens to put the world on a clean energy path by 2040.”