IRENA’s research determined that 582 gigawatts of renewable power capacity were added to grids globally in 2024, representing an increase of nearly 20% from the previous year. Most of that growth happened in Asia, which accounted for 71% of the new capacity.

Ninety-one percent of large new renewable projects worldwide delivered cheaper electricity than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative. Onshore wind was the most affordable source of new power generation in all major markets, followed by solar. Wind was 53% cheaper and solar was 41% cheaper than fossil fuels. Solar and wind together now represent 46% of electricity generation globally.

“We’re no longer debating whether renewables make economic sense,” Scott Kelly, an economist and climate strategist, wrote in a LinkedIn post about the new report. “We’re debating whether our institutions and electricity networks are equipped to handle the deployment of such low-cost generation.”

Structural decoupling from fossil fuels

“After more than a decade of steep cost declines, solar and wind energy prices
have begun to stabilise – a natural sign of market maturity,” Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s director-general, observes in his introduction to the report. The cost of onshore wind stayed below the global average in China and Brazil, while China and India reported below-average levelized cost of energy for solar.

In Europe, solar surpassed coal for the first time in 2024, and clean sources overall were responsible for more than two-thirds of the total power that was generated. In the United States, solar and wind grew at an average compound rate of 12.3% per year between 2018 and 2023, while coal declined by 10.2% each year during the same period. “These trends point to a structural decoupling from fossil fuel–based power generation, enabled by supportive policies, falling technology costs and rising electrification,” the authors of the report observe.

The cost of battery storage, meanwhile, continues to fall rapidly and is approaching a 100% drop in price since 2010. The credit goes to manufacturing scale-up, better materials efficiency and improved production processes. Hybrid systems that combine wind and solar with battery storage are becoming the standard strategy in many places, because they offer greater output and reliability.

Digital technologies are also giving renewables a competitive edge. Things like predictive maintenance and AI-enabled asset management help increase operational efficiency and performance across a longer lifespan.

They’re not just cheaper

Price competitiveness isn’t the only advantage that renewables boast over fossil fuels. They also increase energy security by limiting dependence on international fuel markets. “Renewables are no longer the risky bet; fossil fuels are,” Kelly concludes.

The IRENA report also calculates avoided costs. The report estimates that displaced fossil fuel generation in the United States in 2024 amounted to US$24.1 billion in avoided fossil fuel costs and US$21.5 billion in avoided air pollution damages.

Mohammed Mostafa El-Khayat, executive chairman of the New and Renewable Energy Authority, also warns that IRENA’s figures on the lower cost of energy for renewables “can be misleading if not considered in the context of relevant natural resource availability – namely, solar irradiance and average wind speeds.”

Plenty of challenges to deployment

But it’s not all smooth sailing for renewables. Trade barriers, geopolitical strife and bottlenecks in the supply chain are all obstructing further cost reductions, La Camera notes. Access to financing also presents a barrier in the Global South in particular.

Africa made up “just 1.5% of global investment in renewables last year, despite accounting for 85% of the world’s population without access to electricity,” Bloomberg reports. Part of the problem is that investors demand much higher interest rates for new wind projects in Africa compared to Europe – 12% vs. 3.8% – though the cost per unit of electricity is about the same, because the capital expenditures are lower. Cheaper financing, therefore, could go a long way toward accelerating renewable expansion in Africa.

“The Global South must be empowered to generate its own electricity without adding to already unsustainable level of debts,” Bahamian climate scientist Adelle Thomas told the Associated Press.

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Permitting delays and infrastructure constraints have put the brakes on deployment, particularly in Europe and North America. Wind and solar may be cheaper, but they are slow to be integrated into grids. One reason for the friction, according to Osman Erkal, a portfolio manager for the U.K. responsible-investment firm Downing, is that “regulatory frameworks often treat each component (generation, storage) separately, resulting in complex permitting processes and misaligned market signals.”

Looking to the future, cost declines are expected to continue, albeit at a slower pace as markets continue to mature. The near term could actually bring price increases for green energy, the report warns, particularly from trade tariffs on renewable components.

Mark Mann is a journalist and editor for Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

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In 2021, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) set a target for the aviation industry to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. With the sector contributing 2.8% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, many airlines are considering carbon-capture-and-storage technologies and electric-powered planes. But these innovations may be years away from becoming scalable solutions. Sustainable aviation fuels (or SAFs), however, are an immediate tool that could help airlines kick-start their green transition.

“The use of SAF is expected to contribute around 65% of the reduction in emissions needed by aviation to reach net-zero in 2050,” says Albert Tjoeng, head of corporate communications for the IATA, which defines an SAF as a non-fossil fuel that has the potential to generate lower carbon emissions than conventional kerosene in its life cycle.

In April, Air Canada committed to investing $50 million in SAFs and other carbon-reducing technologies. And according to IATA, more than 50 airlines around the world have used sustainable fuels.

“Airlines bought every drop of SAF available in 2021,” Tjoeng says. “So airlines want to use SAF. The issue is the supply.”

At the moment, industry standards state that . Scientific trials to prove that aircraft can safely run on a solution that’s 100% sustainable are in the works.

There are a number of sustainable alternatives, some commercially available, some in development. Here’s what could be an eco-friendly power source on your next flight:

Cooking oils

Oils and fats are currently the most accessible option, according to Bradley Saville, a professor at the University of Toronto in the school’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry.

“There’s a lot of growth where you’re seeing refineries being reconfigured because it’s low-cost and the infrastructure required for production is perfectly aligned with existing oil refinery technology,” he says. “The compatibility makes it a very attractive initial pathway.”

In the Netherlands, for example, Neste, an oil refining company, has a partnership with McDonald’s. Since 2020, Neste has picked up used cooking oil from 252 of the fast-food restaurants and refines it into fuel.

Dutch airline KLM has been viewed as a trailblazer for its use of cooking oil as fuel on a commercial flight in 2010. One year later, it scheduled more than 200 trial flights between Paris and Amsterdam using biofuel made from used cooking oil. Lufthansa and Continental Airlines followed suit shortly after.

Saville, who has also been assessing sustainable-fuel life-cycle emissions for the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization, says that oils can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90% compared to fossil fuels.

But to be truly sustainable, Saville adds that the best way to produce this fuel is to use excess or unwanted oil and fat that doesn’t pass food-grade standards instead of growing crops specifically for fuel.

His models also show used oil and fat being the cheapest to produce, at US$1,200 to $1,300 per ton.

Biomass and municipal waste

Saville says that biomass, made from algae, crop residues, animal waste, forestry residue and municipal waste, could also have big potential as an aviation fuel.

“If you look to crop and forest residue and leave just the right amount behind to promote good soil quality, you could replace a fairly high percentage of jet fuel,” he says. “Then with municipal solid waste, you’re solving a waste problem and turning it into energy.”

Biomass has the same 80 to 90% reduction as used oils but come at a slightly higher production cost, at US$1,800 to $1,900 per ton. This is one barrier to implementation, Saville explains, and one reason why these fuels are in short supply. Unlike with waste oils, the infrastructure transition isn’t as seamless and supply chains aren’t set up to source and deliver on this in a big way, he adds.

In 2021, United Airlines used jet fuel made from agricultural waste such as corncobs and corn stalks in a normal passenger flight. And in 2016, the airline and Los Angeles International Airport made a pledge to purchase up to 15 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel using agricultural waste and non-edible natural oils over a three-year period. Saville considers the airline a leader in this sense, noting it has been the only airline that has consistently made other offtake agreements with fuel producers.

In 2017, British Airlines partnered with U.S.-based Solena Fuels to make and use jet fuel from municipal solid waste. It was the first project in the world to attempt to convert municipal waste into a fuel for airplanes.

Synthetic kerosene

Synthetic kerosene, also known as e-kerosene or power-to-liquid, might show the most promise in terms of its ability to reduce the airline industry’s carbon footprint. It is made by combining hydrogen and carbon dioxide. If the hydrogen is generated using renewable electricity (known as green hydrogen) and the carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere, models have shown it to have zero, or very close to zero, carbon emissions.

This is a sustainable fuel that is in the earliest stages of development and implementation.

British energy giant Shell is working on establishing synthetic kerosene operations in Germany and the Netherlands. It produced 500 litres of e-kerosene over three months for a KLM flight in February 2021, from Amsterdam to Madrid, that blended the e-kerosene with conventional fuel.

In October 2021, German non-profit atmosfair opened the first production plant, aiming to produce a carbon-neutral product. Lufthansa announced at the time that it had agreed to buy 25,000 litres of the fuel each year for five years. The fuel will be mixed with conventional kerosene.

Then in June, Airbus, Uniper, Siemens Energy and Sasol also announced that they were partnering to open an e-kerosene production facility in Hamburg that would be operational in 2026.

Saville says he can’t provide cost estimates at this time, but numbers provided by the Dutch Ministry for Infrastructure and Water Management in 2021 calculated a production price tag ranging from €1,500 to €6,800 per tonne, which translates to US$1,800 to $8,200.

What Saville does project, however, is that these options will be mainstream in the next seven or eight years.

“We’ll just be scratching the surface, but we’ll be on a clearer path,” he says. “It will be important for broader policy support and cooperation to take place amongst a bunch of different stakeholders and federal government. This will ensure we can increase production and build the infrastructure.”

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The economic crisis resulting from the pandemic has forced corporations and governments to deviate from their standard operating procedures, opening up an opportunity for innovation and creativity, said Michael Sabia, who was recently appointed by the federal government to head up the infrastructure bank.

“We need to seize this moment to be creative about how we reposition the national economy for a world that is going to be different, and a very important part of that [effort] is repositioning our economy to be a significantly lower carbon economy,” Sabia told a virtual roundtable hosted by Corporate Knights.

Sabia said that there is plenty of potential for the Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to participate in clean energy projects but that the federal Crown corporation has underperformed to date.

The CIB has a mandate to invest $35 billion in federal funding by 2027/28 but has been criticized for its slow start.

Sabia said the bank should focus less on traditional infrastructure like roads and ports and more on stimulus projects that accelerate the energy transition, including renewable power, interprovincial transmission, low-carbon transportation and digitalization efforts to ensure all Canadians have access to high-speed internet.

The Corporate Knights roundtable was part of its seven-part Building Back Better project that urged the Liberal government to ensure that any economic recovery plan have a climate-change focus.

Addressing the roundtable, Industry Minister Navdeep Bains said Canada will have to be innovative in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis.

He said hundreds of Canadian businesses have responded to the need for medical equipment by changing their operations to produce new products. “That’s the same mindset we have to have when it comes to confronting the climate crisis.”

In a white paper released Wednesday, authors Ralph Torrie, Céline Bak and Toby Heaps said the federal government should allocate $106 billion over the next 10 years for a host of clean energy projects that would create the equivalent of 670,000 full-time jobs per year. More than a third of the federal government investment, $40 billion, would be frontloaded in the first two years (with half dedicated to grants to finance a green renovation wave). Over 10 years, the white paper estimates, the federal investment and complementary policies would crowd in a further $730 billion in mostly private sector investment.

All told, the investments would reduce greenhouse (GHG) emissions by 236 megatonnes annually by 2030, from 2018 levels of 729 megatonnes. That scale of GHG reductions would put the country on track to meet the Liberal government’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, Bak told the roundtable.

Proposals have included support for a major retrofit program to improve energy efficiency in buildings, planting an additional 800 million trees a year for 10 years, and investments in coast-to-coast electric-vehicle (EV) infrastructure, as well as interprovincial transmission lines to deliver low-carbon electricity and a $40 billion Energy and EV Innovation Fund to help create Canadian champions in fast-growing low-carbon markets where Canada has strong assets, including bitumen-derived carbon fibres, green hydrogen, renewable jet fuels, batteries and EVs.

Other speakers suggested that a green stimulus plan should have goals beyond job creation and emission reductions.

Canadians are now confronting a triple whammy of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and the vivid reminder of the systemic racism embedded in the country’s attitudes and institutions, said Catherine Abreu, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada.

Any green stimulus programs must be based on a “just recovery” Abreu said. Her group was one of 150 civil society organizations that released a document this week proposing “Six Principles for a Just Recovery” for a more equitable and sustainable future.

“This moment is forcing us into confrontation with the vulnerabilities that are built into our economic and social systems,” she said. “There are ongoing crises that lurk behind the current health and economic emergencies . . . So if we are going to tackle issues like climate change, we have to come at them fundamentally as a fight for justice.”

The federal government can pursue reconciliation with Indigenous communities by partnering with them on clean energy projects that deliver health, economic and social benefits to the people, said Terri Lynn Morrison of the Indigenous Clean Energy network.

Morrison said Indigenous people are already major developers and partners in clean energy projects across the country. “They’re ready to seize the opportunity,” she added.

Some economists have questioned whether stimulus spending on clean energy infrastructure is the optimal way to respond to an economic slump precipitated by a health crisis that has forced Canadians into social isolation. Sectors like retail, restaurants and tourism have been hit hardest with job losses, and it’s not clear they would benefit from traditional – or even non-traditional – stimulus spending.

In a blog post last month, economists Dale Beugin and Mike Moffatt argued that green stimulus spending should target areas such as infrastructure, while government should continue to rely on regulation and carbon price to drive climate policy.

Trying to meet the requirements of both recovery and emissions reductions would result in an approach that fails to do either efficiently, they argued.

“Climate considerations should be less constraint and more a radar to help identify non-traditional but job-rich investment opportunities, such as deep retrofits and flood protection for homes and workplaces,” Heaps said via email. “Climate can also be a tiebreaker where two recovery options offer similar economic benefits.”

“In addition to the large investments in green infrastructure, the ‘shecovery’ will likely require significant investments in eldercare and childcare,” he added.

During the roundtable, Ivey Foundation president Bruce Lourie noted that countries like Germany and South Korea have succeeded in providing support for key clean energy sectors. The refrain that “governments shouldn’t pick winners” is a “tired and misguided refrain for us to be using,” he said.

As an example, he cited the promising opportunities for Canada to be a global leader in the emerging market for hydrogen-powered buses and trucks.

Environmental economist David Sawyer said proponents of green stimulus plans should emphasize “co-benefits” that come with investment in emission-reduction projects. They can include not only more jobs but also health benefits from reduced fossil-fuel pollution and greater resiliency to withstand the severe weather impacts of the climate crisis.

Dianne Saxe, Ontario’s former environment commissioner, said Canada needs to find a way to maintain long-term climate-change policies so businesses and consumers have confidence that investments made today are not undermined tomorrow.

“The biggest challenge is how to have stable policies that survive government changes,” she told the roundtable. Canadians need to be active, she said. “Fundamentally, to get durable public policy, we need strong, loud public demand for it.”

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