Where Data Tells the Story
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In 2015, the United Nations adopted its Sustainable Development Goals, setting 167 targets under 17 topics to be reached by 2030. While progess has sadly lagged for many undertakings and some previous gains were lost by the setbacks of the coronavirus pandemic and other global crises piling up recently, there are several bright spots, i.e. goals ranked as on track by the organization. One of them is goal 7.a - international cooperation on energy.
The subtarget aims to increase investments in renewable energy in developing countries and data on the topic shows that this has been happening. While in 2015, annual international public financial committments for the cause stood at only around $12 billion, this had increased to $21.6 billion by 2023. In 2019 and 2020, previous gains had been wiped out as the world struggled with an economic slowdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the sector exhibited the recovery that many others lacked and reached 2017 (but not 2016) levels again by 2023.
According to The Energy Progress Report 2025, multilateral banks increasingly channelled funds towards renewables research and installation in developing nations. It criticizes that only around quarter of funding is through more advantageous concessional loans and grants and that funding sources are not very diverse. Also rated "on track" is target 7.b - investing in energy infrastructure - with installed renewables capacity in both developed and developing countries climbing from 248 watts per capita in 2015 to 478 watts per capita in 2023.
Access to energy services and increasing the share of renewable energy in total energy consumption are goals under target 7 that are also progressing (if not exactly fast enough), making the area of affordable and clean energy one of the more successful among the SDG agenda. 92.5 percent of all people are expected to have access to electricity by 2030, up from 87 percent in 2015, but short of the goal of 100 percent. At the same time, the share using safe cooking fuels will grow to 78 percent by 2030 from just over 60 percent in 2015, also missing universal access. While a substantial increase in the share of renewables in the world's energy mix was not attested, green energy sources still exhibited a steady growth (now at 17.9 percent). Energy efficiency improvements finally fell short of their target every year, leaving them with a ways to catch up to the goal of improving the energy use to GDP ratio by an annual 2.4 percent. Between 2015 and 2020, improvements had only stood at 1.4 percent annually.