Seven countries now use renewable energy for 100% of their electricity

Recent data has shown that in 2022, countries including Albania, Paraguay, Ethiopia & Nepal produced more than 99.7% of the electricity they consumed using geothermal, hydro, solar and wind power marking what scientists say is an “irreversible tipping point” that will see fossil fuels phased out.

It’s been revealed through data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) that an additional 40 countries used renewable energy technologies to generate more than 50% of the electricity they consumed in 2021 and 2022, illustrating positive steps forward in the transition to more environmentally friendly methods of generating the electricity that’s used on a global scale. Along with this, Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson stated alongside the data, that countries like Germany were capable of running off 100% renewable-generated energy for short periods of time.

The IEA released figures in January that show a 10.5% increase in the use of renewable energy in the UK from the year before, making up 41.5% of its electricity from renewable energy sources in 2022. In Scotland alone, renewable energy technologies generated the equivalent of 113% of their overall electricity consumption in 2022. “These record-breaking figures are a major milestone on Scotland’s journey to net-zero, clearly demonstrating the enormous potential of our world-class renewable energy resources,” Claire Mack, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said at the time. In the lead for electricity generation in Scotland was wind power, however researchers predict that solar will come to dominate supplies over the coming decades.

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Scientists at both the University of Exeter and University College London stated that solar energy will become the world’s main source of energy by 2050 and their 2023 paper published in the journal Nature Communications found that the transition to clean energy is not just reachable, but inevitable. This is due to the technological and economical advancements we’ve seen in recent years within the industry. The researchers wrote in the study “Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is improving fast in a cycle of increasing investments.”