Valentin is a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich and a visiting researcher in Dan Kammen’s Renewable and Appropriate
Energy Laboratory. He brings a humanitarian operations and supply chain perspective, improving deployment and maintenance strategies for
power systems and biomedical equipment at health facilities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Yayun Zhao is a visiting scholar from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in China, with broad interests in energy transition policies and technologies. Her research experience includes power system modeling, comparative analysis of U.S. and China energy policies, and the second-use of retired batteries. She is passionate about exploring how policy and technical innovations can drive sustainable energy solutions and improve the integration of renewable energy into power grids.
Yuqi is a PhD student from Tsinghua University with a focus on renewable energy and power system planning, especially the solution to the impossible triangle of energy. He has been trying to extend the planning objective of renewable energy from merely economic concern to low-carbon, secure and economic objectives. Now, he also works on the interaction between distribution network and electric vehicles. In RAEL, he hopes to contribute to the consumption-based CO2 policy analysis. As an undergraduate student, he also received funding to visit Czech Technical University in Prague for one semester in 2019.
New analysis from University of California, Berkeley researchers finds that China is the only nation on track to triple its renewable capacity by 2030, a key goal for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Amid continuing geopolitical tensions, climate change remains a key area of collaboration between the United States and China. Ahead of last November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Presidents Biden and Xi reaffirmed their commitment to work jointly—and together with other countries—to address the climate crisis and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Central to the agreement, now known as the “Sunnylands Statement,” is a commitment to supporting efforts to triple the global production of renewable energy by 2030. That goal, which is the only quantitative target in the agreement, was previously identified as a key target by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) and agreed to by G20 leaders during their September 2023 meeting.
A study published today in Environmental Research Letters by UC Berkeley researchers finds that the global growth rate of renewable and low-carbon energy capacity is insufficient to meet this target. Using historical data from IRENA and the IEA, the authors project that China is by far the closest to triple its capacity by 2030, while the five remaining regions—the U.S., European Union, the African continent, Central and South America, and the rest of the world—will fall short.
“The climate crisis is now an emergency of inaction on a true energy transition,” said co-author Daniel Kammen, the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. “While some specific policies and the actions of some nations show that a clean, green energy future can be achieved, we must be more systematic, holistic, and aggressive in our actions.”
China’s renewable energy capacity tripled during the last decade, a historic trend projected to continue through 2030. While developers of renewable energy projects in China may face difficulty securing financing and integrating their projects onto the grid, the country regularly surpasses its conservative targets and is more capable of leveraging other policies to facilitate necessary growth.
By comparison, the U.S. would need to significantly raise its renewable ambitions to achieve this target. The authors point to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized $369 billion in new government spending on clean energy and climate mitigation over the next decade, as one successful policy intervention capable of bringing the U.S. closer to its target. While they estimate that IRA-linked renewable energy projects will increase the domestic renewable energy capacity by a factor of 2 or 3, the U.S. would need to more than quadruple current projections to meet its stated targets.
“It’s heartening to see the exponential deployment of the past decade, and 2023 saw by far the biggest gains yet,” said co-author Ari Ball-Burack, a PhD student in ERG. “Moving forward, the U.S. and China have a responsibility to concretely facilitate renewables deployment worldwide.”
Co-author Xi Xi, a graduate student in ERG, notes that the greatest challenge the U.S. and China face will be facilitating and supporting efforts toward tripling renewable energy capacity elsewhere. Renewable energy deployment and power sector expansion are crucial to Africa’s sustainable development goals, yet so much of the continent’s energy development has been historically under-invested. The IEA estimates that more than $200 billion per year of investment by 2030 is required to achieve key energy goals and facilitate a just and inclusive climate transition. Comparable levels of investment are also needed in Central and South America and across the rest of the world.
“The U.S. and China operate within a global context and must proactively acknowledge and incorporate global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, and actively contribute to climate mitigation efforts worldwide,” she said.
The researchers assert that although the two countries’ joint declaration sets an optimistic framework with which to build lasting international climate cooperation, much work remains to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They propose four actionable steps to ensure the Sunnylands tripling commitment is met:
Read the full analysis in Environmental Research Letters
A recent graduate of Northeastern University with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering with minor in Law & Public Policy.
I intend to research the intersection of renewable energy technology, education, and specifically prison education programs focused on STEM. Ultimately, my goal is to work with formally incarcerated citizens as they prepare for re-entry into society. I aspire to work with renewable energy projects in Africa to fulfill my goal as developing into a World Class “Energy” Engineer.
Shuba is the co-director of the California Energy Commission sponsored project
” Engaging Communities in the Design of Sustainable Energy and Localized Futures (SELF)”
Among her many publications are a number that addresses the energy-access-affordability-climate nexus, including:
Recent forecasts suggest that African countries must triple their current electricity generation by 2030. Our multicriteria assessment of wind and solar potential for large regions of Africa shows how economically competitive and low-environmental–impact renewable resources can significantly contribute to meeting this demand. We created the Multicriteria Analysis for Planning Renewable Energy (MapRE) framework to map and characterize solar and wind energy zones in 21 countries in the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) and the Eastern Africa Power Pool (EAPP) and find that potential is several times greater than demand in many countries. Significant fractions of demand can be quickly served with “no-regrets” options—or zones that are low-cost, low-environmental impact, and highly accessible. Because no-regrets options are spatially heterogeneous, international interconnections are necessary to help achieve low-carbon development for the region as a whole, and interconnections that support the best renewable options may differ from those planned for hydropower expansion. Additionally, interconnections and selecting wind sites to match demand reduce the need for SAPP-wide conventional generation capacity by 9.5% in a high-wind scenario, resulting in a 6–20% cost savings, depending on the avoided conventional technology. Strategic selection of low-impact and accessible zones is more cost effective with interconnections compared with solutions without interconnections. Overall results are robust to multiple load growth scenarios. Together, results show that multicriteria site selection and deliberate planning of interconnections may significantly increase the economic and environmental competitiveness of renewable alternatives relative to conventional generation.
Samuel Carrara holds a Master Degree cum laude in Mechanical Engineering (Major: Energy and Mechanical Plants) and a PhD in Energy and Environmental Technologies, both from the University of Bergamo.
After working as an engineer in the gas turbine field, he is now junior researcher at FEEM. His main research interests include renewable energies, sustainable development, energy policies, climate and energy economics, advanced energy systems.
The Platform for Energy Access Knowledge (PEAK) is a project partnership between RAEL and Power for All, a global campaign to accelerate the market-based growth of decentralized renewables as the key to achieving universal energy access. The campaign, established in 2014, serves as a collective voice for businesses and civil society focused on off-grid renewable solutions. The research products of this partnership will provide critical evidence needed to support widespread adoption of distributed technologies.
PEAK is an interactive information exchange platform designed to help aggregate and repackage the best research and information on energy access into compelling data-driven stories for a range of target audiences to ensure maximum visibility, usability and discoverability of that information by individuals, organizations and communities working to make energy services accessible to all.
The Power for All Campaign is directed by Kristina Skierka. PEAK research is directed by Dr. Rebekah Shirley, current Postdoctoral Researcher at RAEL.
See PEAK’s Launch Press Release, March 2016
See PEAK products here and look out for our web portal soon to come.
Recently, PEAK conducted a quantitative analysis that examines the policies of five high-growth markets striving to achieve universal energy access — India and Bangladesh in Asia, and Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia in Africa — and highlights areas for policy prioritization in Low Energy Access countries. Our research is currently under peer-review. See an unpublished, draft/working version of our manuscript and look out for more information soon.
For my website, click here.
I am currently working as Senior Researcher Associate at UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources where I lead the finance research area of the GREEN-WIN project. I focus on climate and sustainability finance policies and governance arrangements in order to contribute to overcoming financial barriers to mitigation and adaptation.
Before joining UCL, I worked for the OECD (Green Growth Unit, Economics Department) as Marie-Curie Fellow, a two-year research grant funded by the European Commission. At the OECD I analysed the effectiveness of energy policies to boost energy investments in Europe. Prior to that, I worked for research centers (FEEM and ICCG) and institutions, including the Italian Association Energy Economics, where I was responsible for the Economic area (2009–2013).
During my PhD, I was visiting scholar at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab, UC Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Kammen (2010–2011). I have worked on a range of novel ways to overcome the first-investment costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
I got my PhD in Business Administration at Polytechnic University of Marche and University of California, Berkeley (co-tutorship of doctoral thesis) with a focus on energy financing policy. My research interests include renewable and energy efficiency deployment, climate finance and energy policy.