BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 18. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that clean energy boosted the global economy by about $320 billion in 2023, making up 10 percent of the world's GDP growth, Trend reports.
According to the agency, this equals adding an economy the size of the Czech Republic to the global output or matching the value added by the entire global aerospace industry in the same year.
As such, clean electricity made up roughly 80 percent of the new capacity added to the world's electricity system in 2023, while one out of every five cars sold worldwide was an electric vehicle.
The surge in global investment in clean energy manufacturing is remarkable, driven by both industrial policies and market demand, the agency says. Notably, employment in clean energy jobs surpassed that of fossil fuels in 2021 and keeps on growing.
Meanwhile, in the US, GDP grew by a sturdy 2.5 percent in 2023. This growth was significantly influenced by investments in clean energy manufacturing spurred by legislative actions like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Electric vehicle sales also saw substantial growth. Clean energy's contribution to GDP growth in the US was around 6 percent in 2023, a scale comparable to the booming digital economy driven by artificial intelligence.
China saw clean energy contributing to about one-fifth of its 5.2 percent GDP growth in 2023, with significant growth observed across all assessed categories, particularly in clean power capacity and electric vehicle sales. Clean energy manufacturing expansion accounted for approximately 5 percent of China's GDP growth.
In the EU, clean energy played a substantial role, contributing to nearly one-third of GDP growth in 2023. However, this share is somewhat inflated due to overall weak GDP growth of around 0.5 percent.
India emerged as the fastest-growing large economy in 2023, with GDP increasing by about 7.7 percent. Clean energy contributed slightly less than 5 percent of this growth, primarily from investments in new solar power capacity.