Energy Systems and Energy Security in the 2026 Renewables-Based Economy
The global energy landscape continues to change as renewable energy expands across power generation and other energy uses. Solar and wind deployment continues to grow rapidly, supported by electrification and energy storage. However, fossil fuels still dominate global final energy consumption, showing that the broader energy transition remains incomplete.
A Renewables-Based Economy (RBE) goes beyond simply increasing renewable power generation. It represents a broader transformation in which renewable energy becomes integrated across energy systems, economies, and society, supported by electrification, infrastructure, technology, and policy while strengthening energy security and reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
The scale and challenges of the transition are clear in the numbers. Modern renewables supplied around 15% of global final energy consumption in 2024, while renewable power capacity reached 5,655 GW in 2025. Meanwhile, over 1,600 GW awaited grid connection, and stationary energy storage approached 470 GW.
In this article, we will explore the Energy Systems and Energy Security dimension of the REN21 RBE Tracker 2026, examining renewable energy growth, energy dependence, grid infrastructure, energy storage, electrification, and policy developments that together show how global energy systems are progressing towards a renewables-based economy.
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| REN21 RBE Tracker 2026 overview of renewable energy, electrification, energy security, and energy planning. |
1. Renewable Energy Share in Total Final Energy Consumption
Tracking renewable energy across total final energy consumption provides a broader view of the energy transition than electricity generation alone. It shows how far renewables have actually penetrated electricity, heat, transport, and the major energy-consuming sectors.
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Renewables remain a limited part of total energy consumption: Modern renewables accounted for around 15% of global total final energy consumption (TFEC) in 2024, compared with about 10% in 2014. Despite continued growth, rising overall energy demand has slowed the increase in renewables as a percentage of total consumption.
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Fossil fuels continue to dominate the global energy system: Fossil fuels represented around 80% of final energy consumption in 2023. This shows that strong renewable deployment has not yet translated into a comparable transformation of the overall energy mix, particularly outside electricity generation.
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Renewable penetration varies significantly by energy use: Renewables supplied around 33% of global electricity consumption in 2023, compared with approximately 10% of heat and only 4% of transport fuels. Heat and transport therefore remain considerably more dependent on conventional energy sources.
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Progress remains uneven across demand sectors: Renewables represented approximately 20% of final energy use in agriculture, 19% in industry, 18% in buildings, and 5% in transport in 2023. Technical requirements, existing infrastructure, and continued fossil-fuel dependence create different transition rates across these sectors.
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Electrification and renewable energy must progress together: Higher electricity use does not automatically create a renewables-based economy if electricity generation remains dependent on fossil fuels. The transition therefore requires electrification and renewable energy deployment to advance together across buildings, industry, agriculture, and transport.
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The power sector is leading the renewable transition: Renewable energy supplied around 33.7% of global electricity generation in 2025, rising from less than 20% in 2010. Regional progress remains uneven: Latin America and the Caribbean exceeded 60%, while Europe and Oceania exceeded 40%. In contrast, Asia and Africa remained below 30%, showing that rapid renewable electricity growth is not yet occurring equally across the world.
2. Energy Import Dependence
Energy import dependence is a major factor in energy security. Expanding domestic renewable resources can reduce exposure to imported fuels, although the transition also introduces new dependencies on technologies, materials, and global supply chains.
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Most countries remain dependent on energy imports: Among the countries covered by the RBE Tracker, 92 countries imported more energy than they produced, compared with only 36 net energy exporters. This imbalance leaves many economies exposed to international energy markets and external supply conditions.
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Energy import dependence creates economic and security risks: Dependence is particularly significant across Europe, large parts of Asia, and many African countries. Reliance on external energy supplies increases exposure to price volatility, supply disruptions, and geopolitical tensions, making energy security an important driver of the renewable energy transition.
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Renewables can strengthen domestic energy security: Unlike fossil fuels, which are geographically concentrated and continuously transported between producers and consumers, renewable resources are more widely available for domestic development. Increasing renewable energy production can therefore reduce fuel-import dependence and improve the predictability and resilience of national energy systems.
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Energy dependence is changing rather than disappearing: Renewable energy systems depend on global supply chains for solar PV, wind turbines, batteries, grids, electric vehicles, and materials including copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and rare earth elements. These dependencies are mainly linked to upfront investment and industrial supply chains rather than continuous fuel consumption.
3. Renewables in Energy Supply
Renewable energy supply expanded strongly in 2025, led overwhelmingly by solar PV and wind power. However, deployment remains geographically concentrated, while grids, storage, and other enabling infrastructure are struggling to keep pace with generation growth.
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| Global renewable energy supply and installed capacity across major renewable technologies. |
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Global renewable power capacity reached a new record: Total installed renewable power capacity reached approximately 5,655 GW by the end of 2025, following annual additions of around 885 GW. This continued the rapid expansion of renewables within the global electricity supply.
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Solar PV dominated new renewable capacity: Global solar PV capacity reached approximately 2,889 GW in 2025 after adding around 697 GW during the year. Of these additions, about 59% came from utility-scale installations and 41% from decentralised or off-grid solar systems.
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Wind remained the second major source of renewable growth: Global installed wind power capacity reached approximately 1,305 GW, following around 165 GW of new capacity in 2025. Hydropower reached about 1,280 GW, but added only around 19 GW during the year.
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Renewable deployment remains highly concentrated: China accounted for approximately 53% of all renewable power capacity additions in 2025, including around 50% of global solar PV additions and 73% of wind additions. Many emerging and developing economies continue to face financing, grid, and industrial-capacity constraints.
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Rapid generation growth is creating a new system challenge: Solar PV and other variable renewable sources are expanding faster than grid infrastructure, storage, and system flexibility in many markets. Sustaining renewable growth therefore requires investment beyond generation, particularly in grids, storage, and the infrastructure needed to integrate increasing renewable capacity.
4. Energy Systems and Infrastructure
Rapid renewable deployment is placing new demands on electricity systems. Grids, storage, interconnections, digitalisation, and system flexibility must expand alongside renewable generation to maintain reliability and efficiently integrate growing shares of variable energy.
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| Renewable generation, grid infrastructure, investment, and energy storage supporting the global energy transition. |
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Grid connection has become a major bottleneck: In 2025, more than 1,600 GW of renewable electricity projects were waiting for grid connection worldwide, including around 600 GW already near completion. This demonstrates the growing gap between renewable project development and available grid infrastructure.
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Battery storage faces the same connection challenge: Around 650 GW of grid-connected battery storage capacity was waiting for connection in 2025, with approximately 250 GW near completion. Expanding grid capacity is therefore necessary not only for new generation but also for the storage required to support it.
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System flexibility determines how much renewable energy can actually be used: Higher shares of wind and solar can increase renewable energy curtailment when grids, storage, interconnections, and demand flexibility are insufficient. Countries with stronger and more flexible electricity systems can integrate high renewable shares while maintaining comparatively low curtailment.
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Investment in electricity grids is increasing: Global annual grid investment increased from approximately USD 323 billion in 2021 to around USD 483 billion in 2025. Continued investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure is essential as electricity demand and renewable generation expand.
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Energy storage is becoming a major part of power-system infrastructure: Global stationary energy storage capacity reached almost 470 GW in 2025. Utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) expanded particularly rapidly, increasing from around 59 GW in 2023 to more than 212 GW in 2025.
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Modern energy systems require more than physical grid expansion: Smart metering, digitalisation, demand-side management, storage, flexible tariffs, interconnections, and sector coupling can help electricity systems respond dynamically to changing generation and demand. These technologies are becoming increasingly important as variable renewable penetration rises.
5. Energy Demand and Electrification
Electrification extends renewable energy beyond power generation into major energy-consuming sectors. However, progress differs considerably across buildings, agriculture, industry, and transport, while growing electricity demand creates additional requirements for renewable generation and infrastructure.
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| Global energy demand and electrification trends across major energy-consuming sectors. |
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Electrification varies significantly across demand sectors: In 2023, electricity represented around 36.2% of final energy consumption in buildings, 32.5% in agriculture, and 30% in industry. Transport remained far behind, with electricity supplying only about 1.5% of its final energy consumption.
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Electric vehicles are accelerating transport electrification: Global electric car sales exceeded 20 million vehicles in 2025, representing around 25% of all new car sales. China led the transition with electric vehicles accounting for approximately 55% of new car sales, followed by Europe at around 28%.
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Renewable fuels remain important for transport: Global liquid biofuel production reached nearly 193 billion litres in 2024, recovering strongly after the decline during 2019–2021. Bioethanol remained the largest source at around 121 billion litres, followed by biodiesel at 50 billion litres, renewable diesel at 20 billion litres, and biojet fuel at 1.8 billion litres.
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Heat electrification is expanding through heat pumps: Heat pump deployment continues to grow across major markets, although regional trends differ considerably. China showed the strongest and most consistent growth, with annual heat pump capacity additions reaching nearly 40 GW in 2024 and 2025, while Europe and the United States experienced more variable annual deployment.
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Not every energy demand needs to be electrified: Non-renewable sources still supplied around 77% of global heat consumption in 2023. Modern bioenergy increased from 7% in 2013 to 9% in 2023, while renewable electricity supplied 3%, solar heat 1%, and geothermal 1%. Direct renewable heat can therefore complement electrification in buildings and industry.
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Future electricity demand will place additional pressure on energy systems: Data centres, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, cooling demand, and broader electrification are expected to increase electricity consumption substantially. Renewable generation, grid capacity, storage, and system flexibility must therefore expand together with electricity demand.
6. Renewable Energy Targets and Energy Plans
Renewable energy targets and long-term energy plans show whether national ambitions are aligned with infrastructure development and demand transformation. The RBE Tracker highlights progress, but also reveals major differences across sectors.
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Renewable energy policies are widespread but uneven across demand sectors: As of 2025, 136 countries had national policies supporting renewable integration in at least one of four sectors: agriculture, buildings, industry, and transport. However, only 17 countries had policies covering all four sectors.
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Transport receives the greatest policy attention: Renewable energy policies were identified in 108 countries for transport, compared with 92 countries for buildings, 72 for industry, and only 31 for agriculture. Fiscal and financial incentives remained among the most common instruments supporting renewable technologies.
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Electrification and distributed renewables dominate policy support: Many national policies promote electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar irrigation, and distributed solar PV. In transport, biofuel blending mandates are also widely used, showing that governments are combining electrification with renewable fuels and other enabling technologies.
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Renewable energy targets are now common worldwide: As of 2025, 169 countries had renewable energy targets expressed as a share of total energy consumption. Among them, 91 countries had targets specifically addressing renewable energy shares in total final energy consumption.
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Targets remain heavily concentrated in the power sector: Renewable electricity targets were identified in 124 countries, while only 30 countries had targets for renewable fuels and just 28 countries for renewable heat. This imbalance reflects the continued policy focus on electricity rather than complete energy-system transformation.
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Long-term planning must connect supply with energy demand: Renewable deployment needs to be coordinated with infrastructure, electrification, energy efficiency, and demand across agriculture, buildings, industry, and transport. REN21 notes that cross-sector planning involving multiple institutions generally produces more comprehensive energy-transition strategies.
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| Global renewable energy targets and policies across transport, buildings, electricity, and other energy sectors. |
Summary
The REN21 RBE Tracker 2026 shows that renewable energy is expanding rapidly, particularly in the power sector, but the transition towards a complete renewables-based economy remains uneven. Fossil fuels still dominate total final energy consumption, while renewable penetration in heat, transport, and several end-use sectors remains comparatively limited.
Accelerating the transition requires more than adding renewable generation. Stronger electricity grids, energy storage, electrification, renewable fuels and heat, supportive policies, and coordinated long-term energy planning must develop together. Energy security increasingly depends on building an integrated and flexible energy system rather than focusing on renewable capacity alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is a Renewables-Based Economy (RBE)?
A1: A Renewables-Based Economy integrates renewable energy across electricity, heating, transport, industry, and other energy uses. It also requires supporting infrastructure, electrification, energy storage, policies, and long-term planning to transform the wider energy system.
Q2: What share of global energy consumption comes from renewable energy?
A2: According to the REN21 RBE Tracker 2026, modern renewables accounted for around 15% of global total final energy consumption in 2024. Renewable penetration remains considerably higher in electricity than in heat and transport.
Q3: What is needed to build a renewables-based energy system?
A3: Increasing renewable generation alone is not enough. A renewables-based energy system also requires stronger electricity grids, energy storage, electrification, renewable heat and fuels, flexible energy demand, supportive policies, and coordinated long-term planning across major energy-consuming sectors.