How close then are we to making renewables the dominant technology for energy supply? The answer is that we have made remarkable progress. But it is not fast enough to be transformative within the relevant timescale, one that has become ever shorter as a result of the past decades of delays.
The bad news is that this fall in costs has not been transformative enough, quickly enough. A rise in the share of renewables in electricity generation has indeed occurred. In the EU it reached 25 per cent in 2021. But in the world as a whole it was still only 13 per cent. Meanwhile, total emissions from all sources have not fallen. Yet, if the 1.5C limit is to be kept alive, total emissions have to fall sharply by 2030, particularly in electricity generation.