Future of wind: deployment, investment, technology, grid integration and socio-economic aspects

Decarbonisation of the energy sector and the reduction of carbon emissions to limit climate change is at the heart of the IRENA’s energy transformation roadmaps. These roadmaps examine and provide an assertive yet technically and economically feasible pathway for the deployment of low-carbon technology towards a sustainable and clean energy future. IRENA has explored two energy development pathways to the year 2050 as part of the 2019 edition of its global energy transformation report. The first is an energy pathway set by current and planned policies (reference case). The second is a cleaner climate-resilient pathway based largely on more ambitious, yet achievable, uptake of renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, which limits the rise in global temperature to well below 2 degrees and closer to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels and is aligned within the envelope of scenarios presented in the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 °C. This report outlines the role of wind power in the transformation of the global energy system based on IRENA’s climate-resilient pathway (remap case), specifically the growth in wind power deployments that would be needed in the next three decades to achieve the Paris climate goals.