Innovations in renewable energy encompass all new approaches that help to overcome barriers and result in an accelerated deployment of renewables to support the energy transition. Innovative solutions to decarbonise the global energy sector require combining various policy instruments across the whole technology lifecycle, from R&D to market scale-up, as well as the development of new smart technologies, information technology, new types of financial and market instruments, business models and the engagement of new actors across the energy systems.

A first-of-a-kind mapping and analysis of innovations that will transform the power sector, provided by IRENA, shows that by making use of innovative solutions that allow to integrate a higher share of renewables into power systems, innovation holds the key to a cost-effective global energy transformation. The report, “Innovation Landscape for a Renewable-Powered Future: solutions to integrate variable renewables” contains the most in-depth assessment of the power sector transformation to date. It shows how synergies between different innovative solutions in business models, market design, enabling technologies and system operation are lowering the cost of integrating high shares of variable renewable energy (VRE), while making energy production, transmission and consumption more flexible and empowering a new generation of energy consumers.

Achieving a zero-carbon based energy sector would maximise economic and social benefits, create wealth, reduce energy poverty, facilitate energy access and enable growth in many other sectors. To support an accelerated deployment of renewable energy, IRENA has been undertaking work to advise policy-makers and other energy sector players on: