World urged to boost renewable energy drive at Abu Dhabi conference

The international community was urged to accelerate its transition to renewable energy to keep global temperature rises in check and support a more sustainable future on the opening day of a key environment conference being staged in Abu Dhabi.

A record 2,000 delegates – including key energy industry players – have converged on the capital to put the climate change fight at the top of the agenda for the two-day International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) Assembly.

According to the World Health Organisation, almost 700 million people worldwide still live without access to electricity, highlighting the crucial need to take action.

“We will go to a new energy system that will be dominated by renewables, complemented by hydrogen, nearly green hydrogen, and the sustainable use of biomass,” said Irena director general Francesco La Camera.

He stressed that the world has reached a tipping point now, but that “we are going in the right direction”. The challenge now, he added, is the speed and the scale of the energy transition.

Renewable roll-out needs to speed up

The push to renewables has never been more urgent. On Friday, official figures from the EU's official climate tracker service, Copernicus, confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record globally and the first in which global temperatures reached 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

“The clean energy age is coming,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the summit.

“The benefits for energy sovereignty, security and affordability are crystal clear, but we must move faster to bring the great benefits of clean power to all and to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C.”

In Paris in 2015, world leaders committed to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

This agreement prompted almost all nations to pledge to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases driving global warming.

Irena has been entrusted with the task of monitoring progress on renewable energy goals set in the UAE Consensus announced at Cop28.

To do this, the organisation established a series of special annual reports dedicated to monitoring progress and providing recommendations on achieving key energy goals.

The consensus includes calls to triple renewable power capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, with the aim of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

UAE doubles clean energy capacity in one year

The UAE plans to generate a total capacity of 19.8 gigawatts of clean energy by 2030.

Dr Amna Al Dahak, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, highlighted that in the past two years, the country has doubled its renewable energy capacity.

Global climate disasters, including the wildfires in the US, are “devastating on so many levels”, Dr Al Dahak said.

She has called for collaboration to achieve climate and renewable energy targets to tackle climate change.

“We call on the world to collaborate and make sure that we use this platform for the purpose it was designed,” Dr Al Dahak said.

Mr La Camera voiced hope that the summit will prompt more governments to include more succinct renewable energy targets in their national climate plans, due in February.

The incoming president of the 15th Irena assembly, Slovenian Environment Minister Bojan Kumer, echoed his words and said such a step will pave the way for this year's Cop30 climate talks in Brazil.

He reaffirmed the need for countries to include renewable energy in their nationally determined contributions, which he called “the most effective way to ensure the goal of limiting global warming is kept within reach”.