27 May 2015: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report, titled ‘Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2015 (TCEP 2015),’ which examines progress in the development and deployment of key clean energy technologies and concludes that the rate of growth has slowed and is no longer on track to meet the 2°C Scenario set out in the IEA’s ‘Energy Technology Perspectives 2015 (ETP 2015)’ report.

TCEP 2015 assesses how effective current policy is in catalyzing a more sustainable and secure global energy system. The report focuses on 19 technologies or sectors, and for each, tracks their progress against interim 2025 targets for meeting the ETP 2015’s 2°C scenario and assesses whether the actions needed to decarbonize the energy sector over the ten years to 2025 are progressing.

The report finds that, although market viability of some clean energy technologies is progressing, the overall rate of clean energy technology deployment falls short of achieving the 2°C Scenario. It finds that, for instance, while the number of electric vehicles is still increasing rapidly and solar PV may even exceed 2°C Scenario targets, progress has slowed in the development of bioenergy, offshore wind, geothermal power, solar thermal electricity (STE) and ocean energy.

The report also finds that the deployment of clean fossil and nuclear technologies is limited by the continued dominance of inefficient technologies such as inefficient coal-fired power generation due to a lack of minimum efficiency standards. It highlights, for instance, that natural gas-fired power, which is a cleaner and more flexible fuel than coal, slowed due to an inability to compete against low coal prices (caused by oversupply of coal).

The report stresses the importance of high-quality, timely, comparable and detailed data and indicators for establishing, monitoring and maintaining (or adapting) sound policies, noting that the development of metrics for evaluating clean energy technology penetration requires both national data collection and international data co-ordination. It recommends scaling up data collection and development of metrics in countries where a lack of data hinders setting and meeting targets and measuring progress.

It concludes that decarbonization of the electricity sector will need to accelerate over the next decade if 2°C Scenario targets are to be achieved. It also calls for energy metrics to be used in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process to track energy-framed intended nationally-determined contributions (INDCs), such as renewable energy targets, and to track the underlying drivers of long-term decarbonization. [Publication: ‌Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2015] [IEA Press Release] [IISD RS Story on the ETP 2015 Report]