Clean energy is moving towards centre stage in the global energy system – and as its importance rises, a new clean energy economy is emerging.
Clean electricity accounted for around 80 percent of new capacity additions to the world’s electricity system in 2023, and electric vehicles for around one out of five cars sold globally. At the same time, global investment in clean energy manufacturing is booming, driven by industrial policies and market demand. Employment in clean energy jobs exceeded that of fossil fuels in 2021 and continues to grow.
Quantifying the expanding role of clean energy in the economy is therefore essential to fully understand the stakes and momentum behind energy transitions.
Our new country-by-country and sector-by-sector analysis finds that in 2023, clean energy added around USD 320 billion to the world economy. This represented 10 percent of global GDP growth – equivalent to more than the value added by the global aerospace industry in 2023, or to adding an economy the size of the Czech Republic to global output.
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This assessment is based on a first-of-its-kind analysis of three categories of activity in the clean energy sector:
-Manufacturing of clean energy technologies: investment in clean energy manufacturing, covering the value chains for solar PV, wind power and battery manufacturing
-Deployment of clean power capacity: investment in deployment of clean electricity generation capacity – such as solar PV, wind power, nuclear power and battery storage – and in electricity networks
-Clean equipment sales: sales of electric cars (EVs) and heat pumps.
It is based on detailed project-by-project data gathered and processed by the International Energy Agency (IEA) from primary and secondary sources. We conducted this analysis at the country level, and present here the in-depth results for four of the largest economies: the United States, the European Union, China and India, which together account for two-thirds of global GDP.1
Source: IEA
