Renewables have progressed at an unprecedented pace over the past decade and have consistently
surpassed expectations, with new records being set each year and an increasing number of countries
committing to their respective energy transitions. Much of the advancement has been achieved thanks to
effective policies and planning, coupled with ambitious targets. However, to meet the goals established
in the Paris Agreement, the pace of the energy transitions will have to increase – and for this, policies
enabling a rapid renewable energy deployment will be essential.

Policy support for renewables continues to be focused primarily on power generation globally, with
efforts in the heating and cooling and the transport sectors significantly lagging behind. In the future,
policy frameworks need to take a systems approach with more fully integrated policies across sectors,
incorporating supporting infrastructure and measures for balancing supply and demand, taking advantage
of synergies with energy efficiency, and harnessing distributed renewables for increased access to
electricity and clean cooking. Above all, policies should be stable and transparent. Though many
challenges remain, not least among them the continued subsidies for fossil fuels, more sophisticated
policies continue to stimulate and support the increasing uptake of renewable energy worldwide.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), and the
Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) have joined forces to produce a new
publication, Renewable Energy Policies in a Time of Transition, in a first collaboration of this nature.

This publication aims to provide policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of the diverse policy
options to support the development of renewables across sectors, technologies, country contexts,
energy market structures, and policy objectives. It not only illustrates the changing landscape of policies
for renewable energy in power, heating and cooling, and transport, but also highlights the importance
of system integration and sector coupling, reflecting the expanding opportunities for integration with
increasing renewable energy deployment.

Additionally, the publication presents an updated classification of renewable energy policies, jointly
formulated by the three institutions, to illustrate the latest policy developments around the world and
facilitate harmonised policy tracking.