The total addressable market for micro wind is based on
projected global electricity generation in terawatt - hours from 2020 - 2050, with current adoption [2] estimated from installed capacity figures at 0.007 percent (1.49 terawatt - hours) of global generation (WWEA, 2016).
For a start, even though its growth figures have been increasing for the past five years, renewable energy, excluding large hydro, accounted for just a small fraction — 11.3 percent, to be precise — of the
total global electricity generation last year.
According to Paul Waide, a senior policy analyst with the IEA and one of the report's authors, «19 % of
global electricity generation is taken for lighting — that's more than is produced by hydro or nuclear stations, and about the same that's produced from natural gas.»
Offshore wind is a rising force, but remains for the moment a relatively marginal one at 0.2 % of
global electricity generation; wind and other marine technologies face stiff competition from a range of onshore options, including other low - carbon sources of generation.
The same IEA report compares coal and oil's current 46 per cent share of
global electricity generation to what it would be in 2030 under the 2 °C degree scenario.
In 2011, at 3,500 billion kilowatt - hours, hydroelectricity accounted for roughly 16 percent of
global electricity generation, almost all produced by the world's 45,000 - plus large dams.
Hydroelectricity was the next largest renewable source, providing 3 % of global energy consumption and 15 % of
global electricity generation.
«Coal currently fuels approximately 40 percent of global electricity and is expected to be an essential source of
global electricity generation and steel making for many decades to come.»
Coal's share of
global electricity generation is projected to decline from about 40 percent in 2016 to less than 30 percent in 2040.
Coal still makes up 41 % of
global electricity generation and 29 % of primary energy demand.
Nuclear energy is a mature low - GHG emission source of baseload power, but its share of
global electricity generation has been declining (since 1993).