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Specific commitments to renewable heating received
comparatively little attention. However, examples of
renewable heat goals include the INDCs of Malawi
and Jordan, which include commitments to increased
deployment of solar water heaters.
Approximately 75% of all countries that submitted an
INDC highlighted the transport sector – which relies
almost exclusively on fossil fuels – as an important target
for mitigation. Although the majority of transport-focused
measures sought to reduce fuel consumption through
fuel efficiency standards or increased public transport,
some countries – including Burkina Faso, India, Lao PDR,
Liberia, New Zealand, Seychelles and Uruguay – explicitly
committed to increased use of biofuels to meet their goals.
Success in meeting the most ambitious renewable energy
goals may depend in part on the world’s developed nations
following through on their collective pledge to provide USD
100 billion per year through 2025; increasing voluntary
commitments from other countries; and leveraging private
sector capital to supplement public finance delivered
through mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund
and the Global Environment Facility. Many developing
countries have underlined the need for financial assistance
by submitting “conditional” targets that call explicitly
for international financial support as a requirement for
meeting their stated goals. The Paris Agreement secured
commitments from industrialised nations to mobilise these
funds.
If fully implemented, the INDC renewable energy goals are
expected to boost technological innovation and renewable
energy deployment, particularly in the power sector. Several
recent analyses have examined the potential impacts of
the INDC commitments and the Paris Agreement. One
analysis projects that wind power capacity will nearly triple
and that solar power capacity will increase five-fold over
the next 15 years to meet national climate commitments.
These figures are very much in line with some of the most
ambitious growth scenarios outlined by international
organisations and agencies. Other projections paint a
similarly sunny future for renewables under the new climate
regime built on the INDC commitments, with new growth
estimates for renewable energy in 2030 beating previous
projections by 18%.
In North America, feed-in policies continued to exist only
at the state and provincial levels. No new states/provinces/
territories added feed-in policies in 2015, but two revised existing
programmes. In Canada, Nova Scotia closed the Community
Feed-in Tariff (COMFIT) programme to all new applicants after
reaching a projected 125 MW of projects by year-end 2015, and
Ontario introduced new rates for its MicroFIT programme –
which supports projects 10 kW or less in size – targeting 240 MW
of new projects in 2016. 24
The use of competitive bidding, also referred to as tendering or
auctioning, has gained momentum in recent years. In 2015, the
number of countries utilising tendering mechanisms increased
to 64, up from 60 in 2014. Many of the world’s developing and
emerging countries attracted record bids in terms of both low price
and high volume. All BRICS countries i continued their interest in
tendering: Brazil held several auctions throughout the year, with
solar PV and wind power accounting for the majority of project
allocations, followed by biomass and small-scale hydropower ii ;
the Russian Federation approved 365 MW of solar PV, wind
and hydropower projects; China issued a 1 GW solar PV tender;
India’s new national offshore wind energy policy, introduced in
2015, includes tenders to take place in later years; and South
Africa saw the first allocations under its small project window,
while continuing to receive high levels of engagement under its
Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement
Programme (REIPPPP) iii . 25 ( R See Reference Tables R22.)
Latin America, an early adopter of renewable energy tenders,
05
Further scaling up of the commitments made in INDCs
will be necessary to hold the increase in global average
temperatures to below 2 degrees Celsius. Starting in 2018,
national commitments will be revisited every five years,
with countries assessing progress and encouraged to
submit progressively more ambitious goals.
Source: See endnote 7 for this chapter.
i The five BRICS countries are Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China
and South Africa.
ii Brazil’s auction rules require bidders to secure guaranteed grid access
prior to participating.
iii The REIPPPP programme has approved a total of 6,327 MW of new
renewable energy capacity from 92 individual projects since its creation
in 2011 and is now being used as a model to allocate contracts for IPPs
utilising all forms of energy sources in South Africa. The programme uses
weighted development criteria such as local job creation, local content,
local ownership and development, etc. during bid evaluation to maximise
the national development potential of selected renewable energy
projects.
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