The Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN)

The Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN), agreed and released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on May 9th in Abu Dhabi, assesses existing literature on the future potential of renewable energy for the mitigation of climate change. It covers the six most important renewable energy technologies, as well as their integration into present and future energy systems.

Bioenergy Bioenergy, mainly for traditional cooking and heating in developing countries, currently represents over 10 percent of global energy supply or ca. 50 Exajoules per year.
While the share of bioenergy in the overall renewables mix is likely to decline over the coming decades, it could supply 100 to 300 Exajoules of energy by 2050, the expert review concludes.
Direct Solar Energy technologies include photovoltaics and concentrating solar power (CSP).
In the most ambitious climate stabilization scenarios solar primary energy supply by 2050 reaches up to 130 Exajoules per year, which can be attributed to a large extent to photovoltaic electricity generation. In some scenarios, its share in global electricity generation reaches up to a third by 2050, but in the majority of scenarios remains below one tenth.
Geothermal Energy By 2050, geothermal deployment could meet more than 3 percent of global electricity demand and about 5 percent of the global heat demand.
Hydropower The installed capacity by the end of 2008 contributed 16 percent of worldwide electricity supply, making hydropower the largest renewable energy source in the electricity sector.
According to long term scenarios, hydropower's share in global electricity supply may decrease to 10 to 14 percent. Despite absolute growth in hydropower supply, the expected energy demand growth and continuing electrification could result in a decreasing share.
Ocean Energy Ocean energy is currently only represented in very few scenarios. As shown by the review, projected deployments could result in energy delivery of up to 7 Exajoules per year by 2050.
Wind Energy Under the demand projection of some scenarios global wind power share grows to more than 20 percent by 2050.