The world will add less clean energy capacity in 2026 than last year, the first fall in five years, because electricity networks and trade barriers have not kept pace with the building of solar and wind power, the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency has said. Clean power installations surged a record 692 gigawatts, or 15.5%, to 5,149 GW in 2025, representing half the world's power capacity, after accelerating every year since 2021.

IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera told Reuters on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference that the main cause was the mismatch between generation capacity and the capacity to distribute and transmit electricity. China, the world's biggest renewable energy producer, turned away enough clean energy to power Mexico for a year in the first half of 2026, while networks in Australia and Japan also failed to keep pace, he said.

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Governments pledged to expand clean energy to cut costs and secure supply after the US-Israeli war with Iran choked energy supplies and inflated prices, but La Camera said growth elsewhere this year was unlikely to offset the slowdown in China, where curtailment, when a grid rejects power it cannot carry, has risen. He declined to give a numerical forecast for 2026 additions. The United Nations said last week that urgent and stringent emission cuts were required to slow global warming, making the transmission bottleneck a climate problem as well as an energy one. Sources: Reuters.