Impact4All: Why The World Is Going Solar (No Matter What)
Here’s an article pointing out: We can argue all we want and a solar power revolution will still happen.
This, of course, is completely true. As I noted in Bullish on Renewable Energy, environmentalism will help, but the forces of pure market economics will make solar and wind happen regardless of our greed, ignorance and apathy.
The author writes: We can talk about climate change all we want – on both ends of the argument – but the solar industry will continue to evolve, innovate, and create new solar panels with higher efficiency, using new materials, and the world will buy in.
This is essentially true, but contains an important error; there are no “both ends of the argument.” There are people who understand climate science and those who don’t.
This is very true! As scientists develop solar panels that are more efficient than their predecessors, their prices will slowly drop until they are cheaper than traditional energy such as fossil fuels! People will, therefore, due to their greed, switch to the cheaper method(In this case solar) because they want to save some money! The question is, will they switch in time to help stop global warming?
Craig,
Jason Rothman’s optimistic article may carry more authority if it was by someone who wasn’t a salesman for the solar industry.
Nonetheless, his point is well made. Solar technology is important and solar technology will continue to innovate, improve and evolve.
What is silly, is his (and your own) assertion, “(solar) has now reached a tipping point where it makes much more economic sense to use a combination of solar, wind, and storage, rather than coal, fossil fuels, natural gas, or nuclear power to run our planet”.
That’ss just plain absurd ! This sort of over-optimistic claim harms the credibility of all clean(er0 technologies.
According to the IEA, in 2017 solar constituted less than 0.08% of global power generation.
Solar also has a number of problems looming in the horizon. Not the least among those problems is the lessening of government subsidies, increasing prices of raw materials and potential nightmare of disposal of toxic obsolete panels.
The rate of adoption for solar didn’t increase in 2017 and is expected to decline slightlyover the next five years.
However, let’s be optimistic and imagine adoption continues to expand dramatically by 100% per year ! In five years the percentage of global electricity generation by solar would have actually dropped since the IEA reports global electricity generation demand increased by 3.1 per cent in 2017 and should continue rising at 4-5% per year for the next five years.
Coal fired generation is expected to rise from 40% of global generation to 46% over the next 5-10 years.
That’s reality !
Wind power is a different story, but again both the the IEA and the WWEA reported a slow down in installations. The reports also confirmed that although total global installed Wind Power in 2017 was rated at being capable of producing 5% of world electricity demand, actual usable power delivered represented less than 2.7%.
Craig, I really believe that’s the point you’re missing !
Let’s suppose, if by some miracle Solar and Wind could really keep pace with rising demand, emission levels would still increase. It’s a losing battle as it must by now be obvious the technology just isn’t sufficient.
To put this into context, according to the IEA power generation accounts for about 28% of total global emissions of CO2, the main culprit in global warming/climate change. Of that 28%, Coal makes up about 80% of emissions.
The figures themselves are difficult to calculate and contain a considerable margin of error, but there can be no doubt about the need to reduce coal emissions.
That’s why I can’t understand your attitude toward ignoring the ability for clean(er)coal technology to dramatically lower global emission targets.
Clean(er)coal technology has the potential over 10 years to realistically lower global GW/CC emissions by as much as 30%.
The cost and reliability of such technology can be achieved at much lower cost and greater economic befits than any other method. The time scale is also more certain.
Isn’t it at least worth discussing objectively ?