Coal loses to renewables as world’s largest source of power

About 500,000 solar panels installed every day last year as green electricity surges.

One rare good news about climatic change has emerged in the report that for the first time renewables have overtake coal as the world’s largest source of installed power.

According to the report about 500,000 solar panels were installed every day last year as a record-shattering surge in green electricity to signal hope in efforts at maintaining the world’s climatic balance.

Two wind turbines went up every hour in countries such as China, according to International Energy Agency officials who have sharply upgraded their forecasts of how fast renewable energy sources will keep growing.

“We are witnessing a transformation of global power markets led by renewables,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the global energy advisory agency.

Part of the growth was caused by falls in the cost of solar and onshore wind power that Mr Birol said would have been “unthinkable” only five years ago.

Average global generation costs for new onshore wind farms fell by an estimated 30 per cent between 2010 and 2015 while those for big solar panel plants fell by an even steeper two-thirds, an IEA report published on Tuesday showed.

The Paris-based agency thinks costs are likely to fall even further over the next five years, by 15 per cent on average for wind and by a quarter for solar power.