SINGAPORE, 27 October 2026 — The world will add less clean energy capacity in 2026 than in 2025, the first fall in five years, because electricity grids cannot carry the power being built and trade barriers are slowing the rollout, the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has told Reuters. The warning, delivered on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week conference, reframes the energy transition's biggest problem: it is no longer mainly about building solar panels and wind turbines, but about the wires, substations and planning systems needed to plug them in.
Illustration: Solar panels and wind turbines linked by transmission pylons, symbolising the grid challenge behind the clean energy slowdown.
What Happened
IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera told Reuters on 27 October 2026 that clean power additions would fall this year after accelerating every year since 2021, when the coronavirus pandemic disrupted global supply chains. The previous year set a high bar: clean power installations including hydropower surged by a record 692 gigawatts, or 15.5%, to 5,149 gigawatts in 2025, representing half of the world's power capacity. Even a small decline from that record matters because the world needs additions to keep rising, not merely stay high, to displace fossil fuels fast enough to meet climate goals.
La Camera identified the main cause directly. "The main cause of a lack of new record in additions this year is the mismatch between generation capacity and the capacity to distribute and transmit electricity," he told Reuters. In other words, countries are building generation faster than they are building the networks to move that electricity to homes, factories and cities. He declined to provide a numerical forecast for expected growth in additions this year, but said he did not think increases elsewhere in the world would offset the slowdown in China.
China is central to the story because it is the world's biggest renewable energy producer — and the place where the grid bottleneck is most visible. La Camera noted a slowdown in renewables deployment in China due to curtailment, the rejection of clean power when a grid hits its limits. China turned away enough clean energy to power Mexico for a year in the first half of 2026, according to the Reuters report. Networks in nations such as Australia and Japan also failed to keep pace with a surging renewables buildout, the report added.
Illustration: A wind farm with a switched-off turbine, symbolising curtailed clean power that grids cannot absorb.
Background
Curtailment sounds technical, but its meaning is simple and wasteful: a wind farm spins, or a solar array generates, and the electricity has nowhere to go, so it is thrown away. That happens when transmission lines are full, when local demand is low, or when the system operator cannot balance variable supply with demand. Every curtailed megawatt is clean power that was paid for and built but never used — and it makes the next project harder to finance, because investors see returns cut by grid limits they cannot control.
The grid problem has been building for years while generation grabbed the headlines. Solar and wind costs fell dramatically, governments set ambitious capacity targets, and developers raced to build. Grid investment, by contrast, is slower, more bureaucratic and less photogenic: it involves land rights, planning permission, substations, transformers and cables that can take a decade from proposal to operation. IRENA's own wider outlook work has warned that grids, storage, flexibility and energy efficiency are no longer supporting elements at the margins of the transition but the core infrastructure of the emerging energy system — and that if their deployment falls behind, they risk becoming the bottlenecks that prevent otherwise competitive technologies from scaling.
Trade barriers add a second drag, according to La Camera's remarks as reported by Reuters. Governments have pledged to boost clean energy use to ensure reliable power supply and cut costs, particularly after the US-Israeli war with Iran choked energy supplies and inflated prices. But tariffs, export controls and local-content rules can raise the cost of panels, turbines and batteries, or slow their delivery, at exactly the moment when deployment needs to accelerate. The Reuters report does not detail specific new barriers, and readers should treat the trade point as a general factor cited by the IRENA chief rather than a quantified claim.
The same Singapore conference heard a complementary warning from the International Energy Agency. Executive Director Fatih Birol told delegates that the concentration of a small number of countries in clean energy supply chains is an emerging challenge for Southeast Asian countries, amid fast-rising power demand in the region. Electricity demand in ASEAN countries is rising at twice the pace of overall energy consumption, Birol said, driven by industrial electrification, air-conditioning, electric vehicles and data centres. He also noted that global electric vehicle sales outside China had risen 60% above previous trends over the eight months of the Middle East conflict — a sign that energy shocks are accelerating electrification even as they complicate it.
Why It Matters
The slowdown matters because the climate arithmetic is unforgiving. Reuters noted that renewable energy additions are crucial to reducing global emissions, and that the United Nations said in a report last week that "urgent and stringent" emission cuts were required to slow global warming. If additions fall in 2026, the world must add even more in later years to stay on any pathway consistent with limiting warming — and later years bring their own constraints, including the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey, in November, where negotiators will face the gap between pledges and delivery.
There is also an energy-security dimension. Countries that cannot absorb their own clean power remain dependent on imported fossil fuels for longer, leaving them exposed to price shocks like the one that followed the Middle East conflict. Singapore's own response, announced at the opening of the same conference week, illustrates the grid-first approach: its Energy Market Authority unveiled a five-year plan for five new power plants, seven new substations and roughly 1,400 kilometres of additional underground transmission cable, designed to meet rising demand from industrial and digital investment. The plan, reported on 26 October 2026, raises Singapore's generation capacity by 26% from around 12 gigawatts — but its emphasis on substations and cables is as important as the power plants themselves.
For developing countries, the stakes are different again. IRENA's assembly discussions have highlighted the roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa without electricity, and the fear of a two-speed transition in which advanced economies solve for decarbonisation while emerging regions remain capacity-constrained. If grids lag in wealthy countries with strong institutions, the challenge of building networks where finance and planning capacity are scarcer is greater still — and the case for international grid investment, not just generation finance, becomes harder to ignore.
Illustration: A climate conference hall, symbolising the COP31 talks in Antalya where the clean energy slowdown will be debated.
What Happens Next
The next test comes at COP31 in Antalya in November, where the IRENA findings will sit alongside the UN's warning that current pledges fall far short of what is needed. Negotiators will be pressed on whether climate finance and national plans address grids with the same urgency as generation. Watch for commitments on transmission investment, permitting reform and grid interconnection — the unglamorous items that determine whether the next record year of solar and wind actually reaches consumers.
At national level, the question is whether governments treat 2026 as a blip or a signal. A blip would see additions rebound in 2027 as delayed grid projects come online. A signal would see the slowdown persist, with curtailment rising and investor confidence weakening. La Camera's refusal to give a numerical forecast for this year is itself telling: even the head of the world's renewable energy agency is not yet ready to call the size of the dip. What is clear from his remarks is the diagnosis — the transition's bottleneck has moved from the factory floor to the power line — and that diagnosis will shape energy policy well beyond this year's figures.
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FAQ
What did IRENA say on 27 October 2026?
IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera told Reuters that the world will add less clean energy capacity in 2026 than in 2025, the first fall in five years, mainly because of inadequate transmission networks and trade barriers.
What is curtailment, and why does it matter?
Curtailment is the rejection of clean power when a grid hits its limits. China turned away enough clean energy to power Mexico for a year in the first half of 2026, according to the Reuters report — power that was built but never used.
How big was clean energy growth in 2025?
Clean power installations including hydropower surged by a record 692 gigawatts, or 15.5%, to 5,149 gigawatts in 2025, representing half of the world's power capacity, according to the Reuters report.
Did IRENA forecast how much capacity will be added in 2026?
No. La Camera declined to provide a numerical forecast, but said he did not think increases in the rest of the world would offset the slowdown in China.
What happens next on this issue?
The findings feed into the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey, in November, where negotiators face pressure on grid investment, permitting reform and interconnection, alongside the UN's warning that urgent and stringent emission cuts are required.
Sources
- Reuters, "World to add less clean energy capacity this year, renewables agency chief says," 27 October 2026 (Sudarshan Varadhan, Singapore International Energy Week).
- Reuters, "IEA flags concentration of clean energy supply chains as emerging challenge," 27 October 2026.
- Reuters, "Greenhouse gases hit record highs, further rise expected with El Niño, UN weather agency says," 27 October 2026 (context on COP31, Antalya).
- Singapore Energy Market Authority, Five-Year Energy Infrastructure Plan, announced 26 October 2026 at Singapore International Energy Week.
- IRENA, World Energy Transitions Outlook material on grids, storage and flexibility as core transition infrastructure, as cited in coverage.
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