Solar Energy: ‘Astonishing’ Rise Over Last 10 Years Reveals a Bright Future
Solar energy added more capacity worldwide than any other form of power over the past 10 years, a report released Thursday reveals.
The “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2019,” commissioned by the United Nations Environment’s economy division, paints a bright picture for the future of renewables. It reveals that, between 2010 and 2019, the world poured $2.6 trillion into clean energy and boosted capacity from 414 gigawatts to 1,650 gigawatts.
Last year renewables accounted for 12.9 percent of the world’s electricity. This helped to save two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, in a year where global electricity sector emissions reached 13.7 billion tonnes.
But perhaps the standout figures from the report come from its analysis of solar energy. Solar, which attracted half of that $2.6 trillion investment, jumped from 25 gigawatts of global capacity in 2009 to 663 gigawatts by the end of this year. That’s a bigger growth spurt than any other power source, renewables or otherwise. The report declared the rise as “an astonishing result.”
High investment, dropping prices and runaway installations have helped propel the technology from weird niche to key energy source in just 10 years. As world representatives prepare to meet at the United Nations headquarters this month to discuss reaching net-zero emissions, solar’s rapid rise demonstrates how the technology could offer a feasible alternative to pollution-pumping power plants.
“Sharp falls in the cost of electricity from wind and solar over recent years have transformed the choice facing policy-makers,” Jon Moore, chief executive of BloombergNEF that provided the data and analysis for the report, said in a statement. “These technologies were always low-carbon and relatively quick to build. Now, in many countries around the world, either wind or solar is the cheapest option for electricity generation.”
Solar Energy: The Dramatically Dropping Price of Sunlight
Solar energy’s decade-long meteoric rise follows a gradual and steady development path. The United States Department of Energy explains how people in the seventh century BCE used to make fire with a magnifying glass. In 1887, Charles Fritts described a solar cell made from selenium wafers with relatively low yield rates. The first megawatt-scale power station went online in California in 1981. The department predicted in 2001 that, in 10 years’ time, solar energy would become competitive with traditional power sources.
What came next was even more spectacular. The Thursday report shows that the levelized cost of electricity for solar dropped 81 percent over the past 10 years.
The dropping price of solar has been demonstrated in previous studies. A March 2019 report showed that, in the United States, installing new wind and solar was cheaper than maintaining coal plants in 74 percent of cases. A May 2019 report showed that, thanks to dropping prices, Australia could reach 50 percent renewables by 2030 without any policy changes. An August report found that solar energy in China has reached parity with the price of grid energy.
Far from simply becoming competitive with regular power sources, the ongoing decline in solar prices has made the technology a no-brainer in many parts of the world. That could also provide power to more parts of the world, as analysis predicts off-grid solar will soar and connect up remote communities.
