Fossil fuel crisis prompts biggest ever switch to renewables and storage in 2022

The fossil-fuel induced energy crisis of 2022 – sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – has sparked the biggest ever jump in new construction starts for wind, solar and storage projects.

According to new data released by Rystad Energy, the capacity of new construction starts jumped 42 per cent, from 286 gigawatts (GW) in 2021 to 406GW (ac) in 2022.

Rystad says the huge leap in new construction was driven by high energy prices as consumers and governments sought alternatives to the soaring cost of coal and gas generation.

Among the most notable observations was the 51 per cent increase in rooftop solar construction starts to more than 80GW as households and businesses sought to protect themselves from high power prices.

The growth in rooftop solar is expected to outpace utility scale solar as grid connection and transmission challenges limit the pace of large scale projects.

It also noted that global renewable energy auctions saw significant growth in 2022, with over 110GW of capacity awarded, a 26 per cent rise year on year. Asia remains the main focus for auctions with 77GW awarded in 2022.

It was also a breakout year for pumped hydro:, with a near trebling in new construction starts to 40GW, with two thirds of this coming from China, which aims to have 120GWac of operational pumped hydro by 2030.

“Seasonal storage will become critical for grids seeking to reach higher levels of PV and wind penetrations and thus it is expected pumped hydro will continue to thrive,” Rystad notes.

The pipeline for future projects has also grown significantly, with another 2.2TW of new projects added to the Rystad database, with the biggest source coming from offshore wind (594GW), following by utility PV (583 GW).