International Renewable Energy Agency

• 1. Introduction

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  The International Renewable Energy Agency came into existence on the 26th of January 2009, in Bonn, Germany, when 75 countries signed its founding statute. For the first time in history, nations had created an intergovernmental body devoted entirely to renewable energy. No other international organization had ever staked out that ground exclusively. The questions worth sitting with are these: how did it take until 2009 for such an agency to exist? Who pushed for it, for how long, and what do the years since tell us about whether that push was worth it?

• 2. Decades of Lobbying

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  The seeds of IRENA were planted in the 1980 Brandt Report, a landmark study on global development that pointed toward the need for new international energy cooperation. A decade later, in 1990, the Austrian government under Chancellor Franz Vranitzky formally proposed a renewables agency to the United Nations. The proposal did not move quickly. For nearly two decades, advocacy organizations including Eurosolar, the World Council for Renewable Energy, and the World Wind Energy Association kept the idea alive through persistent lobbying.

  Hermann Scheer was one of the most determined voices in that campaign. A German politician, he served simultaneously as president of EUROSOLAR and chair of the World Council for Renewable Energy. His twin roles gave him unusual reach across both the political and civil-society worlds, and he used them to keep IRENA on the agenda through years when governments showed little urgency.

  The pace began to change after 1981, when a series of meetings took place to discuss the agency's formation. By the 10th and the 11th of April 2008, a Preparatory Conference drew representatives from 54 countries to Bonn. They debated objectives, finances, and organizational structure. The gathering produced a shared sense that a rapid shift toward a renewable energy economy needed an international institution behind it.

• 3. Building the Institution

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  The Founding Conference in Bonn on the 26th of January 2009 launched the Preparatory Commission, a body made up of all signatory states. The very next day, on the 27th of January, that commission held its first session and set out the procedures for choosing an interim director-general and an interim headquarters.

  By the 29th and the 30th of June 2009, the commission's second session convened in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Delegates elected Helene Pelosse as Interim Director-General and placed the interim headquarters in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. They also agreed to open an innovation and technology center in Bonn and a liaison office in Vienna, giving the agency a geographic spread across three continents from its earliest days.

  The arrangement did not hold unchanged for long. At the fourth session of the Preparatory Commission on the 24th and the 25th of October 2010, held in Abu Dhabi, Pelosse's resignation prompted the appointment of Adnan Amin, Kenya's representative and the agency's Deputy Interim Director-General, to step into her role. On the 4th of April 2011, Amin was sworn in as the first formal Director-General. The statute IRENA operates under had officially entered into force on the 8th of July 2010, thirty days after the 25th country deposited its instrument of ratification.

• 4. Leadership and Growth

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  Adnan Z. Amin held the director-general position for two full terms, finishing in April 2019. His tenure spanned one of the most consequential periods in international climate governance. IRENA was involved in policy implementation tied to the Paris Agreement, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and discussions within the G7 and G20. Membership grew until it encompassed nearly all countries worldwide. After leaving office, Amin was accorded the honorary title of Director-General Emeritus.

  Before leading IRENA, Amin had served as Director of the United Nations Environment Programme's New York office and as Special Representative of the UNEP Executive Director. He had also played a significant role in reviewing international governance frameworks and his organization's participation at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Those multilateral credentials shaped the way he positioned IRENA within the broader ecosystem of UN institutions.

  Francesco La Camera of Italy succeeded Amin. He was appointed during IRENA's Ninth Assembly and took office on the 4th of April 2019. The agency's headquarters had by then settled permanently in Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, a planned urban development built around sustainability principles. IRENA carries official United Nations observer status, a designation that grants access to UN proceedings without full membership.

• 5. Renewable Capacity by the Numbers

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  IRENA tracks renewable electricity capacity going back to 2013, pulling data from national statistics, its own surveys, industry reports, and research studies. The figures it publishes have become a key reference point for understanding how fast the energy transition is moving.

  In its March 2024 publication, the agency reported that global renewable electricity capacity grew by 473 gigawatts in 2023. That single-year addition represented 86 percent of all newly installed power generation capacity that year. Solar energy capacity expanded by 32.4 percent and crossed the 1.42 terawatt mark, overtaking hydropower for the first time. Wind energy also passed 1 terawatt of installed capacity. China was the leading contributor to both milestones.

  The 2024 figures, published in July 2025, showed further acceleration. Renewable capacity additions reached 582 gigawatts, a 19.8 percent increase over 2023 and the highest annual expansion since records began in 2000. Solar photovoltaics led the surge at 452.1 gigawatts, accounting for 77.8 percent of the total. Wind added another 114.3 gigawatts. Asia contributed 413.2 gigawatts of that growth, a 24.9 percent regional increase bringing the continent's total to 2.37 terawatts. China alone accounted for 61.2 percent of global solar additions and 69.4 percent of new wind installations. The US, India, Brazil, and Germany also ranked among notable contributors. By the end of 2024, total global installed renewable capacity had reached 4.44 terawatts, with 91 percent of new renewable projects commissioned that year proving more cost-effective than any fossil-fuel alternative.

• 6. The 2030 Target

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  IRENA's published papers and press releases have made the agency's position on the next decade clear. The global goal it advocates is tripling renewable energy utilization and reaching a total installed capacity of 11.2 terawatts by 2030. Achieving that would require adding an average of 1.04 terawatts of new renewable capacity each year. At current rates, that pace remains a stretch.

  The agency has framed the stakes in precise terms. Hitting the 11.2 terawatt target by 2030 would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 43 percent in that year. By 2035, the projected reduction reaches 60 percent. The 2026 capacity report offered a mixed signal: renewables accounted for 85.6 percent of new electricity generation capacity added globally in 2025, totaling 692 gigawatts, with solar providing nearly three-quarters of that. At the close of 2025, renewables made up 49.4 percent of total global installed electricity generating capacity. However, non-renewable additions nearly doubled compared to 2024, with construction of AI data centers accounting for a significant share of that increase.

  The World Wind Energy Association, which gave its 2010 World Wind Energy Award to IRENA's founding member states, described the agency's creation as the most important decision ever taken on the global level in favor of renewable energy. Whether the institution can hold that ambition together now depends partly on its membership. As of July 2022, 168 states and the European Union belonged to IRENA, with 17 more in accession. In January 2026, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the organization.

• 7. Clean Energy Day

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  On the 25th of August 2023, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/77/327, declaring the 26th of January the International Day of Clean Energy. The date was chosen deliberately. January 26 is the anniversary of the day IRENA was founded in Bonn in 2009, and the designation was intended to anchor a global observance to that founding moment.

  IRENA had sought a relationship with the UN system from its earliest days. During Climate Week in New York City in 2009, then-Interim Director-General Helene Pelosse met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to map out future cooperation between IRENA and various UN bodies. The agency sought working relationships with institutions including the United Nations University, UNESCO, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, UNIDO, UNDP, UNEP, and the World Trade Organization, covering areas from education and training to financing, energy access, and trade. The International Day of Clean Energy, anchored to IRENA's founding date, formalized in symbolic terms what had been built piece by piece across those institutional partnerships.