-
Critical Minerals
Critical minerals are essential for a range of today’s energy technologies and for the broader economy. For example, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are crucial to battery performance. Rare earth elements are essential indispensable to the permanent magnets used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors. Electricity networks need a huge amount of aluminium and copper, the latter of which is the cornerstone of all electricity-related technologies. As demand for these materials grows strongly, their strategic importance has also increased – and policymakers have made ensuring secure and resilient mineral supply chains a major priority. Critical Minerals Security…
-
China’s Official Energy Finance in Emerging and Developing Economies Case 4. TFC Solar PV project in South Africa
Project overview and impact South Africa faces significant challenges regarding electricity reliability. The lack of investment, coupled with increasing demand have led to chronic load shedding, with household and industrial consumers affected. Energy-intensive sectors, such as ferrochrome smelting, face rising operational costs, production losses and growing pressure to reduce emissions in line with national and international climate objectives. To address power shortages, the South African government, since 2023, has allowed independent power producers to build power plants above 100 MW and sell electricity directly to private customers without an issued generation license.The Tubaste Ferrochrome (TFC) solar PV power…
-
Renewables 2025 Renewable electricity
Renewable electricity additions for 2025-2030 total 4 600 GW – equal to the combined installed power capacity of China, the European Union and Japan Globally, renewable power capacity is projected to increase almost 4 600 GW between 2025 and 2030 – double the deployment of the previous five years (2019-2024). Growth in utility-scale and distributed solar PV more than doubles, representing nearly 80% of worldwide renewable electricity capacity expansion. Low module costs, relatively efficient permitting processes and broad social acceptance drive the acceleration in solar PV adoption.Distributed solar PV applications (residential, commercial, industrial and off-grid projects) account for 42…
-
Global battery markets are growing strongly – and so are the supply risks
part 1- lithium-ion batteries Batteries’ importance is increasing across key sectors including autos, power, data centres and beyond The global lithium-ion battery market exceeded USD 150 billion in 2025, an increase of over 20% from 2024, but its economic and strategic significance extends far beyond market size. Batteries are becoming a cornerstone of the automotive sector, a critical source of flexibility for power systems, and an increasingly important source of back-up power for digital infrastructure, including data centres and artificial intelligence.Beyond energy, batteries remain indispensable for a wide range of industrial and strategic applications, from portable…
-
Energy System Resilience
Lessons learned from Ukraine Ensuring energy security encompasses both long-term and short-term dimensions. The long-term dimension involves securing sufficient infrastructure investment and diverse supply sources. The short-term dimension – resilience – focuses on systems’ ability to cope with events exceeding standard planning conditions. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine has worked to protect its energy sector and to increase its ability to withstand and rapidly recover from Russia’s attacks on its energy infrastructure. The report explores the lessons that Ukraine has been learning as it works to bolster system resilience and identifies measures that…
-
Copper prices have hit record highs, but smelters face mounting strategic pressures
copper Copper markets enter uncharted territory as structural and short-term pressures converge Copper prices have surged to record highs this year, briefly exceeding USD 14 500 per tonne (intraday) in January 2026, having only passed USD 12 000 per tonne for the first time in December 2025. The unprecedented price levels have been driven by some important short-term developments, including supply disruptions at several major mines and a build-up of US copper inventories due to tariff uncertainty. But they have also been underpinned by some underlying factors, such as challenges in developing new copper mines and the…
-
China’s Official Energy Finance in Emerging and Developing Economies Case 1. Uzbekistan 1-GW Solar PV Project
Project overview and impact Uzbekistan is beginning a rapid scale-up of renewable power, and large solar projects are essential for meeting its target to increase the share of renewables to 40% of total electricity generation by 2030. This is a strikingly ambitious objective given today’s starting point: in 2023, around 90% of Uzbekistan’s electricity was produced from fossil fuels, mainly in the form of natural gas, while solar and wind together accounted for less than 1%, and renewables more broadly reached only about 10%, almost all of which came from hydropower. At the same time, electricity demand…
-
Renewables 2025 Renewable transport
Renewable energy in transport is set to expand 50% to 2030 With greater use of renewable electricity, liquid biofuels, biogases and renewable hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels, renewable energy consumption in transport is expected to rise 50% by 2030. The largest share of this growth (45%) will come from renewable electricity used for electric vehicles, especially in China and Europe.Road biofuels contribute the second-largest share (35%), with significant growth in Brazil, Indonesia, India and Malaysia, supported by tightening mandates and rising fuel demand. Aviation and maritime fuel use makes up 10% of growth, primarily owing to mandates in…
-
Diego Pardow Lorenzo
Ministry of Energy.
-
Renewables 2022 Renewable electricity
Forecast summary The global energy crisis is pushing the accelerator on renewable energy expansion Global renewable capacity is expected to increase by almost 2 400 GW (almost 75%) between 2022 and 2027 in the IEA main-case forecast, equal to the entire installed power capacity of the People’s Republic of China (hereafter “China”). Renewables growth is propelled by more ambitious expansion policies in key markets, partly in response to the current energy crisis. This 85% acceleration on the last five years’ expansion rate results primarily from two factors. First, high fossil fuel and electricity prices resulting from the global energy…
