Renewable energy and EVs have grown so much faster than experts predicted 10 years ago

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By Adele Peters, FastCompany. 

Excerpt: Most climate reports are bleak. Temperatures are soaring. Sea levels are rising. Companies are missing—or abandoning—their emissions targets. But a new report from the nonprofit Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) looks at the surprising amount of progress that’s happened since the Paris climate agreement 10 years ago. Renewable energy has grown faster than every major forecast predicted in 2015. There’s now four times as much solar power as the International Energy Agency (IEA) expected 10 years ago. Last year alone, the world installed 553 gigawatts of solar power...which is 1,500% more than the IEA had projected. Investors are now pouring twice as much into renewables as into fossil fuels. More than 1 in 5 new cars sold worldwide today is an EV; a decade ago, that number was fewer than 1 in 100. ...the world is on track to reach 100 million EVs by 2028. Dozens of countries have net-zero goals that are legally mandated under comprehensive climate laws. Out of the world’s largest 2,000 companies, nearly 1,300 now have net-zero goals in place. ...Typical climate reports, like the United Nations’ Emissions Gap Report, focus on how far off track the world is. “They say...that we’re not doing enough,” says John Lang, net zero tracker lead at the ECIU. “That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that we have made unbelievable progress, and we’ve laid the foundations for structural, sustained emissions declines over the next few decades.”... 

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