IEA urges to expand renewable energy use

Nov. 23, 2011 - Xinhua - pro.energycentral.com

The International Energy Agency (IEA) on Wednesday called for more efforts to expand the practice of deploying renewable energy, to face energy security and climate change challenges.

Countries must focus more on deploying renewable energy in a bid to realize sustainable development and growth, "especially given the world's increasing appetite for energy and the need to meet this demand more efficiently and with low-carbon energy sources," Maria van der Hoeven, IEA Executive Director said in a statement.

"The window of opportunities is closing fast without action. Time to act is now and more efforts are needed", she stressed during a dial-in press conference.

Presenting the IEA new report on the "Best and future practice of deploying renewables," van der Hoeven emphasized the need to expand such energies mainly in emerging markets where oil demand rose sharply due to booming growth.

According to the IEA data, electricity production from non-hydro energy increased by 70 percent since 2005.

Asked about the role of deploying renewables in fighting against climate changes, Paolo Frankl, IEA Head of Renewable Energy Division said billions of tonnes of CO2 emission were avoided thanks to emerging renewables.

"We have done an estimation of 300 millions of tonnes of CO2 avoided due to the use of renewable energy, and including hydro sources we avoided 1.7 billion of tonnes," Frankl added.

"We have not an estimation for the future but we can say that renewables are the second most important contributor after energy efficiency," he stressed, while he highlighted the mechanism used in China to promote many renewables projects.

"It's encouraging for China to become one of the leaders in terms of renewable energy", he said.