IRENA’s Renewable Capacity Statistics 2019

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published the “Renewable Capacity Statistics 2019” which presents the renewable power generation capacity statistics for the last decade (2009 - 2018) in trilingual (English, French, Spanish) tables.

Renewable power generation capacity is measured as the maximum net generating capacity of power plants and other installations that use renewable energy sources to produce electricity. For most countries and technologies, the data reflects the capacity installed and connected at the end of the calendar year. Data has been obtained from a variety of sources, including IRENA’s questionnaire, official national statistics, industry association reports, other reports and news articles. In this report are presented the PALOPs renewable energy statistics.

You can see the report highlights here, where is mentioned that at the end of 2018, global renewable generation capacity amounted to 2.351GW. Hydro accounted for 50% of the global total, with an installed capacity of 1.172GW. Wind and solar energy accounted for 24 and 20%, with capacities of 564 GW and 486GW respectively. Other renewables included 115 GW of bioenergy, 13GW of geothermal energy and 500MW of marine energy (tide, wave and ocean energy).

It’s also important to note the 7,9% growth in renewable capacity during 2018, from which wind and solar accounted 84% share of new capacity in 2018.