Limiting climate change will require an unprecedented global movement to make low-carbon technologies the norm. COP26 – the UN climate conference held last November in Glasgow – showed that unfortunately, the world is far from ready for such a movement. Many leaders still assume that reducing emissions and growing their countries’ economies aren’t compatible goals.
Yet in many places, transitions to clean energy technologies have succeeded far beyond expectations. Since 2010, wind power has grown from providing under 1% to providing 10% of electricity in Brazil, and provided 15% of the EU’s electricity demand in 2019. Solar power – described as “the most expensive way to reduce carbon emissions” as recently as 2014 – now costs 85% less than it did a decade ago, increasingly making it the cheapest electricity in history.
