Top UN Official: 2030 Renewable Energy Target to be 30%

I reported one month ago on the United Nation’s ground-breaking new renewable energy report (a “Renewable Energy Bible” as some have called it). The report, among other things, showed that we could get approximately 80% of our energy from renewable resources by 2050 (currently, we’re at about 13%, but with wind and solar still playing a minor part).

Now, a top UN official — Kandeh Yumkella, head of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and chair of UN-Energy — has said the UN is setting a goal of getting 30% from renewable energy sources by 2030.

In combination with this, the organization wants to increase energy efficiency 40% and supply a much greater number of people with electricity. Currently, about 2.5 billion people are without or have very limited access to electricity.

“The push, to be known as the ’30/30/30′ goals, would be part of efforts to end poverty in developing nations and to combat global warming that the U.N. panel of experts says will bring more heatwaves, droughts, mudslides and rising sea levels,” Alister Doyle of Reuters, who interviewed Yumkella, reports.

Yumkella is intending to officially announce the targets this month and is “aiming for adoption by world leaders at a once-a-decade Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 as part of a shift to a green economy.”

Of course, getting to 30% by 2030 is going to require government policies that give investors and companies the security they need to push the world that far. If every government were making clean energy investment as attractive and secure as China is, that would be no issue, but with completely illogical Tea Partiers and anti-clean-energy Republicans in U.S. Congress, as well as renewable energy backtracking in the UK, these highly needed steps forward are less certain.

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2. China Leading US in Renewable Energy Investment Attractiveness (Top 10 Lists)
3. International Solar PV Nearly Doubled, PV Growth Doubled in 2010
4. Projected Wind Power Growth (Worldwide)
5. Cleantech’s Revolutionary Growth & Expectations for Coming 10 Years

Photo: Wind turbines and solar panels in Spain via vituh