North Macedonia’s renewable energy capacity last year increased to 827 MW and achieved growth of 10.1%, which is close to global capacity of 10.3%, Balkan Green Energy News portal reported.

With such expansion, North Macedonia is on third place among the countries in the region, behind Cyprus that achieved growth above the global rate for 2020 – 15.2% to 371 MW and Turkey’s total growth in renewables was 10.8% to 49.4 GW.

In Greece, the level surged by 9.5% to 10.9 GW. Albania had solid growth, 6% to 2.3 GW, and Croatia’s renewables capacity advanced 5.1% to 3.2 GW.

Romania landed at the bottom of the chart as its renewable energy capacity retreated, though only marginally, to 11.1 GW. Kosovo remained at 139 MW. The remaining Southeast European countries posted very low growth, Balkan Green Energy News portal said.

The economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic left deep scars throughout the planet, but renewable energy continued to post records. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said global capacity jumped 10.3% to just under 2.8 TW.

The addition in absolute terms was a record 261 GW, which was 45.1% more than in 2019, beating forecasts. It is also impressive that solar power (including concentrated solar power or CSP) and wind power accounted for a combined 91% of new installations. Solar power had the strongest growth of all technologies, 22% to 714 GW, followed by wind power’s rise of 18% to 733 GW, according to the IRENA annual report.