As the blades of Dogger Bank start turning, renewable energy looks on track to help us stay at 1.5C of warming

The project will produce 3.6GW of power, enough for 6m homes, when it is completed in 2026.Photograph: Dogger Bank

Good news, from the Guardian:

Carbon emissions from the global electricity sector may peak this year, after plateauing in the first half of 2023, because of a surge in wind and solar power, according to Ember, the climate thinktank.

Their new report on global electricity generation found that the growth of renewables was so rapid that it was close to the incredibly fast rate required if the world is to hit the tripling of capacity by the end of the decade that experts believe is necessary to stay on the 1.5C pathway.

….The IEA’s influential net zero roadmap suggests that the combined share of solar and wind power would need to increase from 12% last year to 40% in 2030 to remain on track.

To achieve that, global renewable capacity would have to triple by the end of the decade, which would require solar power to grow by 26% every year, while wind power would need to grow by 16% a year.

“To put this in context, last year’s year-on-year growth was 25% for solar and 14% for wind, so almost exactly what is needed,” said Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka, Ember’s senior electricity analyst and co-author of the report. “Rapid growth in solar and wind has so far kept pace with pathways aligned with 1.5C. But to keep up these high growth rates throughout this decade, countries need to deploy bigger and faster.”

Work on the Dogger Bank offshore windfarm. Photograph: Alan O’Neill/Dogger Bank

And even more good news, also from the Guardian:

The first turbine to be completed in a project to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm, in the North Sea, has begun powering British homes and businesses.

Developers confirmed on Monday that Dogger Bank, which sits 70 nautical miles off the coast of Yorkshire, started producing power over the weekend as the first of 277 turbines was connected to the electricity grid.

The project, jointly developed by Britain’s SSE and Norway’s Equinor and Vårgrønn, will produce 3.6 gigawatts of power, enough for 6m homes, when it is completed in 2026.