Policy support for renewable energy has increased considerably over the past decade. Two drivers underpin this trend: first, the effort to constrain growth in greenhouse-gas emissions and secondly, the concerns to diversify the supply mix (promoted particularly by high oil prices, especially in 2005–2008). To address these concerns, more and more governments are adopting targets and taking measures to increase the share of renewables in the energy mix. Worldwide, traditional and modern renewables together supplied 27% of total demand for heat, or 1059 Mtoe, in 2008. This increases to nearly 1400 Mtoe (1 Mtoe = 42 PJ) in 2035 in the New Policies Scenario, meeting 29% of total demand for heat. The share of modern renewables in total renewables for heat grows from 29% to 48%. This paper is a comparison analysis of the global and the Hungarian renewable energy trends.