A New Hope: How Solar Energy Might Make A Difference
Ever since the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” came out in 2006, the wider public has more or less become aware of climate change, and the threat it poses to humankind and life on earth in general.
Strangely though, as by some type of cognitive dissonance, we collectively haven’t really done much about it in our day to day lives. Most of us are guilty of that, myself included. For most of the decade that followed the release of the movie, world leaders seemed to take a position that boiled down to “I’m just doing what’s best for my country”.
And as individuals, there’s only so much we can do, ranging from reducing meat consumption to better home insulation and/or solar panel installations. You know, the small things.
The question then is: Is it enough? Will the small, but collective efforts of the individuals that are well-off enough to afford thinking of niceties such as green energy be enough to offset the emissions caused by the other 98% of the population?
Of course not.
But it doesn’t mean that all hope is lost just yet.
Big things have small beginnings.
I’d like to introduce another viewpoint to the conversation. One that may not be entirely representative of the global state of affairs, but one that is very encouraging nonetheless.
And we need courage, now more than ever.
The Forecast: Thunderstorms
When we’re talking about climate change, there’s usually two groups we can identify, if we disregard the disbelievers. One group, probably the larger one, underestimates just how bad our situation is. On the other hand, the group that is mostly aware of the consequences of climate change is enormously pessimistic, and almost completely dismisses the possibility of a brighter future.
To be fair, they’re not that far off.
The unfortunate reality is that grim times are indeed ahead, and that we need to work on solutions without further delay. The IPCC, short for the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, and the IEA (International Energy Agency) are authorities on the subject that are composed of many experts that have the role of discussing current climate and energy related issues, which they then use to make forecasts and recommendations to the international community.
In short, reports by the IPCC and IEA paint a distressing picture of the decades to come, in terms of green energy adoption. In addition to that, scientific community almost unanimously agrees: a 2°C increase in temperature is plausible and would also be disastrous for the world’s habitats.
In this graphic, the IPCC has charted the possible outcomes of climate change in terms of temperature change relative to historical averages. The different scenarios, referred to as “RCP’s”, or “Representative Concentration Pathways”, stand for the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
A brief explanation of what’s to be interpreted: The RCPs are consistent with a wide range of possible changes in future anthropogenic (i.e., human) greenhouse gas emissions, and aim to represent their atmospheric concentrations.
RCP 2.6 assumes that global annual GHG emissions peak between 2010–2020, with emissions declining substantially thereafter. Emissions in RCP 4.5 peak around 2040, then decline. In RCP 6, emissions peak around 2080, then decline. In RCP 8.5, emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century.
At first sight, we seem to be well on our way there. But this doesn’t tell us the whole story, and context can be lacking.
Allow me to explain.
Cloudy, With A Chance Of Sunshine
Forecasting is hard, especially on a global scale. That difficulty is then compounded by the fact that the IPCC is not just predicting a year ahead, it is predicting an entire century of human activity, and the impact thereof on our climate.
The analogy isn’t entirely accurate, but we have trouble determining the weather ten days from now. The weather system is complex, I’ll give you that. But I’d argue that human activity in general is even harder to forecast.
Here’s a forecast on solar energy adoption, published by the IPCC in 2010. This data has been published in the IPCC’s report on “Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation”. It’s a full-blown PDF of approximately a thousand pages of information, compiled by some of the world’s leading scientists in the domain.
The forecast lays out the different scenarios for three different solar-energy related technologies and their adoption. We’ll focus on “Solar PV Electricity” (photovoltaics) for now, more commonly known as solar panels.
The table discusses four different scenarios for solar panel installations worldwide in the years 2010–2020. In being as forthcoming and transparent as can be, the IPCC provided us with four different scenarios:
- a “reference” one, that they call the most realistic one
- a “revolution” scenario, which would be an enormous improvement
- an “advanced” one, which is even more optimistic about the future.
- The IEA also provides us with its own forecast
Here’s a graph that compares all four scenarios:
Interesting to observe is that the reference scenario stays far beneath the other three scenarios following the year 2010. The three other forecasts remain close to each other up to the year 2015 and diverges significantly after that.
So, which scenario do you think we’re the closest to? Let’s compare.
The great news is that the actual numbers are significantly higher than anything that’s been projected by the IPCC. The installed capacity at the end of 2018 will approximately be 508 GW! To put these numbers into perspective, we’re doing:
- 535% better than projected in the Reference scenario (80 GW)
- 141% better than projected in the IEA roadmap scenario (210 GW)
- 52% better than projected by the Revolution scenario (335 GW)
- 16% better than projected in the Advanced scenario (439 GW)
And remember, we’re comparing projected 2020 numbers to actual 2018 numbers, which gives us two more years of PV-capacity growth before the comparison would become entirely valid. It’s not hard to imagine the total installed capacity of PV to reach 700–800 GW by then.
This is great news.
Solar panel installation rates are through the roof, and they keep on growing faster, year over year.
Remember that chart that forecasted relative temperature increase for the coming century? It’s closely related to green energy adoption rates, so who knows.. we might just do better than expected.
Some more perspective. As I said earlier, the actual result for 2018 is around 508GW. The total world energy usage in 2015 was 13000-million-ton oil equivalent, which translates to 17.3 Terawatts of continuous power during the year.
508 Gigawatts is equal to about 0.5 Terawatt, which puts us at approximately 3% of worldwide energy generation — under what is of course the false assumption that solar generates energy 24/7 at maximim efficiency.
We were at 0.12% in 2010. And we’ve barely even started.
Big things have small beginnings.
In another story, I’ll explain what drove solar adoption to current rates, and how solar energy might just change the energy landscape forever.
Other subjects to be discussed include:
- Electric vehicles, and their role in a carbon-free world
- The decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions
- Automation and capitalism are on a collision course
- The role of Big Data & the Internet of Things in our carbon-neutral future
Thanks to Auke Hoekstra, who inpired me to write this post after seeing his tweet on the subject:
