Global green energy generation has moved up a gear as innovation dominates the roll-out of renewables, the head of the UN’s renewable energy agency has said.
Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general based in Abu Dhabi, told The National that the global push to build more renewable energy sources had been breaking barriers, with demand driven up by the energy crisis following the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
“We have seen in the last three months that product solution technology linked to renewables has been exploding everywhere,” he told The National on the sidelines of London Climate Action Week.
Renewable power capacity surged by almost 700 gigawatts of electricity – or 700 billion watts – in 2025, an increase of 15.5 per cent on the preceding year.
“We are moving quite well in installing new capacity, almost 700 gigawatts last year, but the fact that the [energy] demand has been rising more than expected means that the progress in energy efficiency has been lower than expected,” Mr La Camera said.
The expansion is progressing at such pace that the unexpected surge in available energy has hit bottlenecks in distribution channels to households and end users.
Mr La Camera was in London to speak at the Global Energy Transition and Electrification Summit, co-hosted by the UK government, the think tank E3G, and the private-sector Global Renewables Alliance.
Investment in new capacity is not enough to keep the grid going, he warned. More focus was needed now on upgrading grid infrastructure to improve connectivity.
“We have been very successful in creating generation, but we have not been equally successful in building the infrastructure that may assure the electrons and the molecules that we generate will reach the consumers, industries, citizens and families.”
His words echoed the findings of the World Economic Forum's Energy Transition Index 2026, published last week. Record investment of $2.3 trillion globally in clean energy was seen last year, but progress in implementing the transition has stalled, the report said.
The research found that investment alone “is no longer enough to sustain momentum” as war and supply chain disruption slow down infrastructure upgrades.
Though the vast energy demands of AI data centres are often blamed for the spike in energy consumption, Mr La Camera believes a number of factors are responsible for the increase. “There is a change in lifestyles, especially in the developing world, that demands more electricity,” he said.
The world has been experiencing its third energy crisis in six years following the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a key corridor for 20 per cent of the global supply of oil and gas.
There are also concerns that the transition towards AI and its energy-intensive data centres would further drive up costs.
For Mr La Camera, this reinforces the need for a decentralised energy system based on renewables.
He added that he speaks to technology companies in an effort to have them derive most of their energy from renewable sources. “It is in the interest of everyone to work in the market in a way that the customer accepts and the citizen accepts the changes happening in front of them,” he said.
But the rising cost of living has also led to political backlash against net zero targets, including in the UK.
Mr La Camera dismissed concerns that growing populist governments would accelerate a shift away from renewables. “The data says something different,” he said.
“We have no power other than to offer our data and our reflections, and domestic policy is a domestic choice – but I don’t see all this moving towards fossil fuels,” he said.
“What we are trying to make as clear as possible is that the competitiveness of the economies today and in the years to come will be largely determined by the capacity of the energy system to provide electrons and molecules to the economy at the lowest possible cost,” he said.
