In Time for Tomorrow: The Making of the International Renewable Energy Agency

This report looks back at IRENA’s growth and development over the eight-year period following its formal establishment as an intergovernmental agency in 2011. The renewable energy sector has expanded rapidly in parallel. The same period has seen solar and wind power, along with a growing range of renewable options, enter the mainstream, so that they now compete on cost with conventional, fossil-based generation. This accelerating global energy transformation promises wide-ranging changes, including ramped up electrification, mounting synergies between renewables and energy efficiency and the rise of renewable options for transport, buildings and industry. Following the the adoption of the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030 in 2015, renewables have become a widely recognised solution to the climate challenge, as well as a central element in the Sustainable Development Goal on energy, SDG7. Over the last eight years, IRENA has mapped an achievable pathway to a sustainable energy future and analysed the socio-economic impact. This work has shown the global transformation not only to be feasible, but also economically and socially beneficial.