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RMI, in partnership with Aboitiz Renewables and the Southeast Asia Clean Energy Facility (SEACEF), and funded by the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) and Tara Climate Foundation, released Philippine Market Movers in support of the Philippine government’s push for renewable energy development in the country.....read the report..............Please click here to manually start the download. If you'd like to stay informed with the latest RMI news and insights, sign up for our weekly e-newsletter here.

Record-breaking growth in renewable energy in US threatened by Trump. Surge in solar, wind and battery capacity comes as president pledges to halt federal support for clean power. Guardian Dharna Noor12 Feb 2025The US had record-breaking growth in renewable-energy capacity last year, new research shows, but the future of the sector is uncertain amid threats from Donald Trump’s administration. The country brought online 48.2 gigawatts of capacity from utility-scale solar, wind and battery storage in 2024, according to a report from the research organization Cleanview; the report is based on an analysis of federal data. That surge in capacity – enough to power some 3.6m homes – was 47% larger than the increase the US saw in the previous year.

This unprecedented growth is attributable in part to the falling cost of renewables, said Michael Thomas, the founder of Cleanview and author of the report. An even bigger factor, he said, was Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its historic incentives for green technologies. “The IRA changed the landscape,” he said.The report comes as renewable power is being targeted by Trump, who has pledged to halt federal support for clean power as part of his pro-fossil fuel agenda. If he follows through on these promises, they could have devastating effects for the sector and the economy, experts say.“The clean-energy sector is rapidly growing globally, and halting investments can also undermine America’s competitive edge within the renewable energy market,” Nathan Schluter, an energy expert at the consumer advocacy organization Home Energy Club, said in an email. Still, though the president could hamper the growth of clean power, all hope for the sector may not be lost under his administration, Thomas said. “We don’t know what the future looks like right now. No one does,” he said. Even as US fossil fuel production soared to record levels last year, the vast majority of the new energy capacity the nation brought online was carbon-free. Renewables accounted for a combined 93% of all new capacity last year, with nuclear power adding another 2%. It was a sign we are in the “era of zero-emissions energy”, said Thomas. But not all renewable fuel sources are growing at the same rate. The solar-power and battery industries – often paired, with batteries storing power from the sun – saw record success in 2024. Growth in wind power, by contrast, has stagnated, with the US adding less wind capacity each year than before the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2024, the country brought only 5.1 gigawatts of the power source online, accounting for just 9% of all new energy deployed nationwide last year.

Solar and batteries......In 2024, solar power saw the fastest growth in red southern states.....read on            https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/12/renewable-energy-growth-trump  

 A Little-Known Clean Energy Solution Could Soon Reach ‘Liftoff’. Ground source heat pumps could bring geothermal heating and cooling to millions of homes in the coming decade, a federal report concludes. Inside Climate News  By Phil McKenna January 18, 2025 The future is bright for a little known yet highly efficient method of heating and cooling, a new report by the U.S. Department of Energy concludes. Ground source heat pumps could heat and cool the equivalent of 7 million homes by 2035—up from just over 1 million today, according to the report. Such widespread use would reduce peak demand on the country’s electric grid by 12 gigawatts in the summer and 40 gigawatts in the winter, according to the report. That’s equivalent to keeping dozens of coal- or gas-fired power plants offline during such periods of high demand. “There are really large potential grid savings and benefits when these systems get adopted at scale,” Jigar Shah, director of the agency’s Loan Programs Office, said during a Thursday event on the report.Ground source heat pumps harness low-temperature geothermal energy to heat and cool homes. The devices are similar to the more widely deployed air source heat pumps, which work like air conditioners, using fans and compressors to draw heat out of buildings in the summer. Unlike air conditioners, heat pumps also work in reverse, pulling heat into buildings to warm them in winter.

 Almost 120 countries vowed to triple renewables by 2030 – how is it going? At Cop28 last year they also pledged to double energy efficiency in an effort to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels Guardian Juilian Ambrose Wed 20 Nov 2024  Almost 120 countries came together in Dubai last year at the Cop28 climate talks to pledge one of the most ambitious green energy targets in the history of the UN climate talks. The plan put forward was to triple the world’s renewable energy and double its energy efficiency by the end of the decade in an attempt to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. It was an “ambitious yet achievable goal”, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which could play a pivotal role in cutting the world’s emissions to keep global heating in check.But in a year, the world’s progress has struggled to keep up with the pace required to meet these goals.                                                    

Government renewable energy targets ‘unchanged’...... The world’s renewable energy capacity was about 3.4 terawatts in 2022 – or 45 times the size of Great Britain’s total power system – but to meet the Cop28 targets countries would need to reach just over 11TW by 2030. The global energy think tank Ember said in a January report that a tripling of renewables was “entirely achievable”. But in its most recent report it found that national targets by governments were “almost unchanged” and still added up to just over a doubling of the global renewables capacity by 2030. Of the more than 130 countries that signed up to the pledge, only eight had updated their renewable targets by October, according to Ember, resulting in only a modest increase in overall renewable energy targets globally. To date, the global industry is on track to reach 7.2TW by the end of the decade, according to Ember’s analysis of targets for 96 countries and the EU as a bloc. This is a 2.1-times increase from 2023, which would still leave a shortfall of 3.7TW. The analysis has been confirmed by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), which is responsible for providing the official progress report of the UAE Consensus energy goals set at Cop28. Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general, said the organisation was raising the alarm on the “significant gaps” that stand in the way of reaching the Cop28 goals. The new goals set by countries at Cop29 “must mark a turning point and bring the world back on track”, he said......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/20/countries-vowed-triple-renewables-2030-how-going