This report offers a brief refresher on how energy prices should be expected to form in a modern system, the ways in which they should be expected to shape critical investment decisions, and some of the ways energy price formation can go wrong. With this as a foundation, the author lays out a sustainable approach to ensuring a reliable low-carbon electric supply at the lowest reasonable cost.

This report explores potential for urban communities to scale-up renewables by 2030, based on estimated energy use in 3,649 cities around the world. The authors find that every city has massive potential to cost-effectively boost renewable energy use at the local level. They outline three priority areas where cities can take action: renewable energy in buildings (for heating, cooling, cooking, and appliances), sustainable options for transport (electric mobility and biofuels) and the creation of integrated urban energy systems.

This publication, which consists of data tables, presents IRENA’s latest statistics for renewable power generation and capacity, as well as renewable energy balances for all countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region. Data have been obtained from a variety of sources, including an IRENA questionnaire, official national statistics, industry association reports, consultant reports and news articles.

This paper presents an overview of the concerns affecting sugarcane bioethanol production in Africa and provides recommendations for resolving them. Brazil, with decades of experience in biofuel production and consumption, can offer expertise across the entire bioethanol production chain, according to the authors. They identify several realistic areas for collaboration and technology transfer between Brazil and African countries.

A renewables readiness assessment (RRA) identifies the actions needed to overcome a country’s barriers to renewable energy deployment, with IRENA providing technical support and expertise to facilitate consultations among different national stakeholders. This RRA report for The Gambia is structured in five substantive sections. Section 1 presents the introduction covering country background, RRA methodology and the RRA process in The Gambia. Section 2 presents the renewable and general energy context in the region.

This report highlights key findings and recommendations of the Second International Off-grid Renewable Energy Conference (IOREC 2014), which was organized by the IRENA in partnership with off-grid and regional agencies. The conference convened over 400 key stakeholders from across the off-grid renewable energy value chain, including representatives of rural electrification agencies, ministries in charge of renewable energy development, the private sector, academia, financing institutions and international organizations.

This paper analyzes the process through which more than 650,000 off-grid households in rural Bangladesh decided to purchase a solar home system (SHS) from 1996 to 2010. The authors hypothesize that positive word of mouth is the primary driver of these sales. They tested the hypothesized diffusion process through a combination of semi-structured key informant interviews and an examination of 100 households in Panchua Village, including 60 with a SHS and 40 without a system.

Power systems are designed and operated to efficiently manage variability and uncertainty in electricity demand and resource availability. Variable renewable energy (VRE) increases this inherent variability and uncertainty, and thus increases the need for flexibility. Systems with significant variability and uncertainty require flexible generators that can rapidly change output, operate efficiently at lower outputs, and operate for short durations.

Flexibility is a prized characteristic in power systems with significant variable renewable energy. How this flexibility is procured is strongly shaped by the regulatory context. Vertically integrated utilities typically use contractual or policy mechanisms to extract flexibility from generators. In contrast, in partially or wholly restructured power markets, system operators use market designs—with clear definitions of performance requirements—to incentivize the provision of power system flexibility.

To foster sustainable, low-emission development, many countries are establishing ambitious renewable energy targets for their electricity supply. Because solar and wind tend to be more variable and uncertain than conventional sources, meeting these targets will involve changes to power system planning and operations. Grid integration is the practice of developing efficient ways to deliver variable renewable energy (VRE) to the grid.