How is COVID-19 affecting renewables? It’s complicated.

One sign of whether an industry has grown up is how well it can survive a crisis. And when it comes to renewable power in the age of coronavirus, the answer is: pretty darn well. The International Energy Agency forecasts that new renewable additions will fall 13 percent compared to 2019 and that investment will drop  10 percent.  (Other sources have seen a slight uptick in investment in the first half, led by sharp increases in offshore wind.) In either case—and I suspect when the numbers are crunched at the end of the year, there will be some drop—that is a lot less than the hurt on conventional energy forms.

Consider: The largest clean energy fund (ICLN) is up almost 40 percent since early March, twice as much as the S&P. Meanwhile, two major oil-related ETFs (XOP and XLE) are down about 20 and 25 percent respectively. From April through June, renewables generated a record 44 percent of power in the European Union, up from 37 percent over the same period last year. The United States and India both saw big jumps in consumption during the lockdown, due to low operating costs and sometimes, priority access.

What does this record imply about the future? Well, it depends. In Europe, I expect renewables to continue to gain ground, due to the substantial regulatory and financial support. As part of its economic stimulus plan, for example, the European Union is allocating 196 billion euros to clean technologies and some individual nations are adding more. In the United States, renewable investment was a record $55.5 billion last year and the IEA still expects to see capacity added this year and next. Indeed, in 2019, renewables overtook coal as a source of power for the first time since at least 1885, according to the US Energy Information Administration, as coal consumption fell 15 percent—and is projected to fall a stunning 26 percent this year. China is also continuing to put big money into clean energy.

But—and this is a big but—there could be major consequences for renewables in many developing countries, due to issues related to high initial costs, lack of capital, supply-chain disruptions, and project development. And while renewables are growing fast, so is the use of fossil fuels for power generation. For example, global coal capacity increased by almost a third in the decade to 2019—that is more, in absolute terms, than the growth of renewables. While developed countries retired 113 gigawatts of coal capacity from 2010-19, developing countries added 691 gigawatts.

This is not true everywhere: in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Turkey, wind and solar have outpaced fossil fuels since 2016. But it remains broadly true that many developing countries are continuing to invest heavily  in coal and other fossil fuels for electricity generation. As a recent IEA report noted, “Opportunities for newer sources of low-cost clean energy finance to enter the mix, e.g., from institutional investors, are still concentrated in Europe and North America. Although investments in coal power are down in many parts of the world, global approvals of new plants in the first quarter of 2020 (mainly in China) were at twice the rate seen in 2019, and there is a long pipeline of projects under construction.”

Moreover, while renewables accounted for two-thirds of global capacity added in 2019, up from less than a quarter in 2010, capacity measures potential, not actual use. Renewables generation is still very much a minority—about 26 percent globally in 2019. (Solar accounted for less than 3 percent of global generation and wind, about 5 percent; hydropower was the biggest renewable, at 16 percent.) What it adds up to is that renewables are growing fast, and COVID-19 doesn’t look like changing that. But in terms of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, they are not growing fast enough to meet the goals agreed to at the Paris climate conference.

Could COVID-19 be a game-changer for renewables and, in a broader sense, for how power is produced? Maybe. But the numbers are daunting. As Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, put it, “The slowdown in spending on key clean energy technologies also risks undermining the much-needed transition to more resilient and sustainable energy systems.”  And there are also concerns about investment in related technologies, such as grid modernization and energy storage—factors that played a role in California’s mid-August blackouts, as did the unexpected lack of availability of natural gas plants and lower-than-usual wind output.

The renewable industry has emphatically proved its resilience: during COVID-19: it has performed well, both economically and logistically. While the sector has certainly faced some headwinds, the tailwinds pushing it forward look likely to be stronger. But we are still a long way away from a world powered by clean energy.

All views are mine and not those of McKinsey & Company.