Let’s keep building momentum for a fair transition – together
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Unlocking wind and solar through regional action
Unlocking Wind and Solar Through Regional Action – 2024 Annual Report
This first annual ReNew2030 report focuses on stories of impact from the field, set against a backdrop of international statistics showing progress in wind and solar and reflecting on whether we are on track to meet our goal.
Read our reportOur mission is bold yet focused: to scale wind and solar power five-fold by 2030 in the 20 countries that account for around 80% of global power sector emissions.
These countries hold the key to bending the emissions curve – and ReNew2030 exists to help tip the balance. By supporting catalytic partnerships, driving strategic influence, and backing projects with real-world impact, ReNew2030 is working to reshape energy systems in ways that are just, inclusive, and grounded in local priorities.
Regional climate foundations leading local change
In 2024, ReNew2030 regional partners made remarkable progress across diverse geographies, often navigating complex and volatile contexts. Despite these challenges, regional climate foundations remained resilient, ambitious, and solutions-driven to deliver tangible results.
Scaling renewable energy investment through transformative platforms in Nigeria
Strengthening capacity and constituency for renewable energy in South Africa
Leveraging elections to secure policy wins in the United Kingdom
Driving scalable solutions for distributed solar PV in China
Growing the momentum for Pakistan’s solar boom
Catalysing offshore wind development in the Philippines through multi-stakeholder collaboration
Empowering communities through renewable energy projects in Mexico
Strengthening community participation in wind energy development in Brazil
Driving international impact with our partners
2024 was the year of sustaining the momentum on the 3xRenewables goal announced at COP28 in Dubai. Throughout the year, ReNew2030 played a pivotal role in driving accountability and progress toward implementation, supporting a diverse network of transnational partners across regions.
With support from its transnational partner, the Pooled fund on International Energy (PIE), ReNew2030 collaborated with the Global Renewables Alliance to host the first-ever Global Renewables Summit in September 2024 in New York. This gathering brought together governments, private sector, philanthropies, international organisations, and academia – uniting all key stakeholders for the first time to strategise on accelerating the global race to tripling renewable energy capacity.
The Sunrise Project played an important role in engaging financial institutions in global policy-making spaces. Through its flagship Global Finance Programme, Sunrise advanced efforts to align financial systems with clean energy goals, drawing on insights from its work in Asia and Europe. One major initiative was the Sustainable European Central Bank coalition, calling for financial policies that facilitate the energy transition such as dual interest rates.
Another transnational partner, International Climate Politics Hub (ICPH), leveraged its trusted diplomatic network to push for progressive climate policy at the global level. Throughout the year, ICPH remained steadfast in its efforts, ensuring the most ambitious outcomes possible, despite a challenging political environment. At COP29, where some parties sought to weaken last year’s Global Stocktake language on the energy transition, ICPH’s engagement was instrumental in holding the line.
Strategic storytelling and influence
ReNew2030 amplifies its impact through media coverage, thought leadership, and high-profile platforms, ensuring its work reaches key audiences. TED talks, opinion articles in Financial Times Sustainable Views, and strategic engagements at COP29 have elevated its visibility, driving conversations on renewable energy.
Tap on the priority areas below to discover more details:
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Authentic storytelling that inspires
ReNew2030 is expanding how it tells its story – launching a voice-note video series featuring community energy successes, and publishing partner-driven blogs on overcoming structural barriers and building inclusive momentum for renewables.
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Broadcast and media highlights
ReNew2030’s narrative was featured on the NPR TED Radio Hour, bringing solar energy challenges and opportunities to mainstream audiences. Media moments like this help ensure that the clean energy transition remains part of the global public dialogue.
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Connecting through digital channels
With the launch of our quarterly newsletter in 2024 and a refreshed, more accessible website, ReNew2030 has strengthened its digital presence – sharing partner stories, spotlighting achievements, and deepening engagement across the coalition.
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Making waves at major global platforms
Whether at New York Climate Week – where ReNew2030 co-hosted the first ever Global Renewables Summit – COP29, or the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue, ReNew2030 takes part in many of the main global climate events. At COP29, we partnered with We Don’t Have Time to spotlight renewable energy solutions, alongside the African Climate Foundation and Tara Climate Foundation. In Berlin, we co-hosted a strategic convening with the Global Renewables Alliance, aligning voices on finance, permitting, workforce development, and countering disinformation.
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From TED talks to the Financial Times: Reaching global audiences
ReNew2030 has taken centre stage across influential media and thought leadership platforms. TED talks featuring early ReNew2030 perspectives and a compelling case study by Tara Climate Foundation have reached over 1.3 million viewers, sparking conversations well beyond the climate community. Opinion articles in FT Sustainable Views have reinforced the coalition’s key messages, from scaling solar to unlocking finance.
Modernising the grid: The missing link to scaling renewables
Modernising the grid: The missing link to scaling renewables
The world is making significant strides toward a clean energy future, but our electricity grids are stuck in the past. Unless we rapidly modernise grid infrastructure, the entire net zero vision is at risk.
Outdated, underfunded, and overstretched, electricity grids have become one of the biggest barriers to scaling renewable energy. Wind and solar projects are being delayed or cancelled due to grid bottlenecks while curtailment – the intentional reduction of renewable energy output – is expected to rise in areas where grid flexibility and storage capacity remain limited. Modern, resilient grids are essential for economic and social development, and for protecting communities from climate impacts like heatwaves, wildfires and floods. Despite growing investments, regional disparities and infrastructure gaps risk leaving some communities behind in the energy transition.
But solutions exist and philanthropy has an important role to play in modernising the grid infrastructure. Over 60 countries and 100 non-state actors have signed the Global Energy Storage and Grids Pledge, committing to add or refurbish 25 million kilometres of grids by 2030. At ReNew2030, we believe that philanthropy is uniquely placed to accelerate grid modernisation. By unlocking investment, streamlining policies, and supporting regulatory reforms and local capacity building, we can help turn electricity grids into the backbone of the clean energy transition.
Through conversations with experts and partners in the sector, we identified key barriers to progress and explored how philanthropy can be a powerful catalyst for change.
What are the key challenges to grid modernisation?
Lengthy regulatory processes
Planning and approval for grid projects is often slow and complex and in some cases takes up to a decade. Complex permitting requirements, environmental assessments, and stakeholder consultations can create bottlenecks that slow down project development. These delays not only hinder the integration of renewable energy but also impact grid reliability and resilience.
Current regulatory frameworks often lack the flexibility to support rapid investment and innovation in grid infrastructure. Streamlining these processes, while maintaining robust oversight, is crucial to building a modern, resilient, and renewable-ready grid.
Philanthropy can play a critical role in accelerating regulatory reform through policy engagement and public education. Raising awareness of the urgent need and broad benefits of grid modernisation is key. By funding research and engaging with policymakers, philanthropic organisations can help shape policies, encourage investment, and support faster, more effective approval processes.
Unlocking investment
Modernising the grid is one of the most critical – and complex – challenges in the transition to renewable energy. The need to expand and upgrade aging infrastructure while integrating variable renewable energy sources is well established. Yet the sheer scale of investment – estimated at USD 717 billion annually through 2030, combined with regulatory fragmentation, uncertain financial returns and market design barriers, continues to hold back private capital.
This investment gap is especially stark in the Global South, where the urgent need to expand and modernise transmission and distribution infrastructure poses a significant hurdle to achieving energy transition goals.
While advanced economies grapple with modernising their aging grid infrastructure, some developing economies are still laying the foundations for their power systems. This makes grid investment not only a matter of modernisation, but a cornerstone of development, resilience and energy equity.
To bridge this gap, philanthropic capital can play a catalytic role. By funding early-stage pilots, strengthening institutional and technical capacity, supporting research, and addressing market failures – particularly in regions facing persistent investment gaps, philanthropy can help de-risk innovation and attract commercial investment.
The power of philanthropy
Equipping local actors with the skills and tools to design, manage, and maintain future-ready grids is essential. This includes workforce development and technical education, alongside support for the digital transformation of electricity systems — ensuring they are smart, adaptive, and capable of balancing supply and demand in real time.
Philanthropy can play a transformative role in accelerating grid expansion and modernisation – bridging gaps often left by governments and private investors.
By catalysing progress, de-risking innovation, and strengthening institutional capacity, philanthropy can help deliver a just, inclusive and sustainable clean energy future.
2025: A pivotal year for renewable energy
2025: A pivotal year for renewable energy
Conversations from COP
Conversations from COP
We asked people behind community-based energy projects how to gather wider support for the energy transition
We asked people behind community-based energy projects how to gather wider support for the energy transition
The journey towards clean energy in Europe has made major strides, but it is not always a smooth journey. Public resistance to renewable energy projects and related infrastructure risks slowing down the transition, at a time when both speed and scale are crucial for effective climate action. At ReNew2030, we believe the key to overcoming these challenges lies in effectively engaging and supporting communities throughout the transition process. The 2023 Barometer reveals that 93% of EU citizens recognise climate change as a serious problem. Yet, few have the opportunity to translate this concern into concrete action. This is where community-based energy projects come in.
As we’ve actively engaged with and fostered the development of community-based energy initiatives for years, we’ve met the citizens behind these projects. On top of empowering people to take climate action, saving money, and building communal ties, energy communities have been described as one of the best ways to gather support for the energy transition, by making these benefits tangible in people’s day-to-day lives.
Decades of success stories in Europe: energy communities as a working model to be deployed
Energy communities have been gaining traction across Europe for decades, driven by proactive individuals and groups seeking to take control of their energy production and use. These projects enable citizens, small businesses, and local organisations to actively participate in the energy transition, offering a range of benefits such as lower energy bills, increased independence, and local development opportunities.
The emergence of these communities typically follows a bottom-up approach, where a group of motivated individuals comes together to garner support for creating a structured energy system tailored to their specific needs and aspirations. Research indicates that over 900,000 people across the EU are already involved in energy communities, with tremendous potential for further growth.
The European Climate Foundation (ECF), one of ReNew2030’s long-standing partners, recognised the potential of community-based energy projects in helping advance the energy transition as early as 2015. ECF’s vision is rooted in the belief that the energy transition should be fair and inclusive, actively involving communities in the process. Nearly a decade later, ECF’s Energy Democracy network gathers more than 25 partners, bringing together NGOs and energy cooperatives, across 14 European countries.
Partners across Europe have shared that positive support for the emergence of additional energy communities across Europe comes through early consultations with the community, an encouraging legal framework at national and European level, and the sharing of local best practices.
Energy communities ensures people own and benefit from energy transition
The socio-economic benefits of energy communities are a prime focus – from lowering energy bills to fostering local development. By creating these benefits, energy communities turn their participants in allies of the energy transition as a whole, fostering wider public support for the energy transition. As energy communities are platforms for raising knowledge about renewable energy among participants, they also empower these individuals to become advocates for sustainable change.
The current Danish landscape offers a telling example – in this country, 52% of the existing wind capacity operates under some form of citizen ownership. This model has not only empowered individuals but has also significantly bolstered public support for renewable energy. When people participate in or own energy projects, they are more likely to appreciate the benefits and accept potential drawbacks. Ownership, in particular, further strengthens acceptance and enthusiasm.
To meet our climate goals and stay within planetary boundaries, the share of renewable energy in the global power mix will have to increase from 28% in 2020 to 68% by 2030. To deploy this massive increase in renewable energy production, we need to secure citizens’ buy-in and support behind the changes that will drive a clean, safe energy system. Community energy projects, for all the benefits they provide to participants, can play a key role in this system-change.
Insights from New York Climate Week
Insights from New York Climate Week
We asked experts how we can overcome structural barriers to renewable energy investments
We asked experts how we can overcome structural barriers to renewable energy investments
At Renew2030 we collaborate globally with a diverse range of partners, from grassroots movements to policy think tanks, philanthropies, and climate NGOs. We’ve asked them how they tackle key barriers to renewable energy investments, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
Investments in renewable capacity reached a record high of USD 570 billion in 2023. While this increase massively concerns China, EU, and the United States, Brazil and India accounted for just over 6% of investments, and in Africa, investments fell by 47% compared to 2022. This disparity highlights the need for an inclusive transition to net zero – one that ensures low- and middle-income countries aren’t left behind. These regions face a significant financing gap, with an estimated shortfall of $1.2 trillion annually required to meet their climate goals.
From our interviews with experts and partners working in policy research, investment deployment, and community engagement, three key blockers, and strategies to address them, have emerged across regions and areas of focus.
Shift financial flows
The first barrier that needs to be overcome in many markets is the legacy of subsidies, regulatory frameworks, risk models, and fossil fuel financing. Fossil fuel deployment remains the default in many cases, often requiring a policy pivot from those in power to shift the existing capital into clean energy projects.
Our partners have been actively collaborating with national governments to enable this transition, redirecting fossil-fuel investments to green energy initiatives. For example, Renewables First, is working with ReNew2030’s partner, The Sunrise Project, to help investors pivot from coal to renewables and shift policies to facilitate the flow of capital into renewable energy projects.
Efforts on the ground are beginning to yield results: Pakistan has seen a surge in solar capacity, with 15 GW of solar panel imported over the past year, driven by a steep increase in electricity tariffs over the last three years. This rapid shift, mostly toward off-grid solar solutions, underscores the urgent need for grid modernisation and policy reforms to support decentralised solar generation, while ensuring the financial sustainability of electricity utilities
Creating regulatory and policy frameworks to attract additional funding
Redirecting fossil fuel investments is just the beginning. To close the $1.2 trillion financing gap for low- and middle-income countries, partners have highlighted the need to attract additional capital, both foreign and domestic.
A core blocker outlined by the experts lies in the perceived risk embedded within any regulatory framework by markets, hindering rather than facilitating renewable projects development. For campaigners and philanthropists, this challenge presents a significant opportunity. Adjustments in regulatory barriers—such as those related to planning or capital requirements—can have outsized impacts on attracting private sector investment.
For example, we’ve supported initiatives like Bangladesh’s Centre for Policy Dialogue, through our partner The Sunrise Project. They collaborate with academics, policymakers, and investors to identify and highlight the domestic investment blockers and operational bottlenecks that prevent large-scale overseas investment in renewable energy-led power generation. These blockers are brought to the attention of national officials and investors at the occasion of Energy Forums bringing all stakeholders together to promote the creation of a new framework that expedites renewable energy investment.
Similarly in Sri Lanka, our partner V20 is engaging strategically with Finance Ministries to develop investment plans to attract foreign investments into renewable energy projects. The Sri Lanka Offshore Wind Roadmap exemplifies what can be achieved with strong regional cooperation that promotes offshore wind development.
Investing in tomorrow’s solutions: enabling funding system-change
Lastly, experts flagged the need to test models that can attract private capital in large-scale renewable energy projects.
True transformation in the energy transition isn’t just about addressing existing barriers but also about investing in breakthrough solutions before they hit the mainstream. On this front, we’ve been collaborating with local players to enable innovative renewable energy funding models that deliver financial, social, and environmental benefits.
When these models are successful, they attract additional private and public capital. A standout example is the RIPLE (Renewables Investment Platform for Limitless Energy), a $500 million initiative in Nigeria created by the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) with support from The African Climate Foundation. This initiative is a system change, unlocking private capital to create a renewable energy system that will benefit Nigerians, and that can be replicated in other regions..
The path to a just energy transition
The path to a just energy transition
Renew2030 at COP28 pushing for the tripling pledge
Renew2030 at COP28 pushing for the tripling pledge
The agreement reached at COP28, calling on countries to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, is a historic marker, signalling the end of the era of fossil fuels and the beginning of the age of renewables.
Renewables and their unstoppable power to bring prosperity and a clean future bookended the COP28 proceedings.
The groundbreaking pledge made by 130 countries at the opening of the COP to treble renewable energy production by 2030 was further consolidated in a global goal in the Global Stocktake in the closing hours of the international conference of leaders.
ReNew2030 is proud to have contributed to this pivotal moment by supporting partners around the world to address the barriers and levers that affect the rapid and equitable scaling up of wind and solar power.
At COP28 we saw civil society organisations from around the world holding firm on the need for an equitable, well financed, fair transition. We saw the renewables industry come together in force calling for 3x renewable energy by 2030 – exemplified by the leadership of the Global Renewables Alliance team. And we saw philanthropy and the regional climate foundations coming together with the ReNew2030 international partners with a clear message in support of the renewables goal.
ReNew2030 will continue to work with partners on the ground through the regional climate foundations and international partners to turn this historic goal into real projects that meet the needs of communities around the world.
ReNew2030 team interviewed live on We Don’t Have Time
Rebecca Collyer and Luisa Sierra Brozon of ReNew2030 and ReNew’s Mexican partner Iniciativa Climática de Mexico )ICM) were interviewed by We Don’t Have Time, the climate change social network and review platform.
