We are at 2.5 TW of renewables, hydro, solar, and wind. With 176 GW added in 2019, we are only three years away from 3 TW, nearly a fifth of our initial target for the entire world. Of course, there is more to Global Warming than electricity, as we have often seen in these Diaries. But we must take satisfaction at each such achievement. A year ago I wrote The First Green Terawatt Was the Hardest.
BNEF thinks that it may have happened in June 2018, or very likely a bit sooner.
That first TW of wind and solar, on top of a pre-existing base of about a terawatt of hydropower, took more than 40 years. We are in the midst of the next terawatt of development, expected to take five years.
| Hydro | 1,310.9 GW |
| Wind | 622.7 GW |
| Solar | 583.5 GW |
Total | 2517.1 GW |
As to the second trillion,
Bloomberg: World to Install Over One Trillion Watts of Clean Energy by 2023
In other words, about five years after the first one, or maybe less. According to various analysts it could be 200-250 GW of new wind and solar annually, up from 176 GW in 2019. We can foresee annual production rising to 500 GW annually, a thousand times the amount added in 2000. That is a TW in two years, with much more growth to follow. Another dozen TW would thus take less than 24 years to achieve, very likely much less. With another doubling in the rate of growth, we are probably looking at 100% renewables in the 2030s.
The world started commissioning more gigawatts of clean energy than fossil fuels from 2015.
Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence World Electric Power Plant Database, Platts
We have also been decommissioning fossil fuel plants at an accelerating pace in most of the world, with results that vary greatly by country. The biggest laggards, India and China, want to get off coal and so on, but they have yet to rationalize their economic incentives, and they are still trying to do too much via the command economy rather than getting out of the way and letting the low-cost technologies lead the way. They have vast coal generation capability that they cannot use to capacity, and are continuing to build more that will have even lower capacity use factors, making them even more uneconomical.
- Some plants can't get enough coal to burn via existing rail lines.
- Some can't get enough water from rivers for the steam they need to produce.
- Some can't sell their expensive power into markets where lower-cost renewables are growing.
The latest statistics published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Renewable power capacity growth
Renewable generation capacity increased by 176GW (+7.4%) in 2019. Solar energy continued to lead capacity expansion, with an increase of 98 GW (+20%), followed by wind energy with 59GW (+10%). Hydropower capacity increased by 12GW (+1%) and bioenergy by 6GW (+5%). Geothermal energy increased by just under 700 MW. Solar and wind energy continued to dominate renewable capacity expansion, jointly accounting for 90% of all net renewable additions in 2019.
World now has 583.5 GW of operational PV
Global grid-connected solar capacity reached 580.1 GW at the end of 2019, along with 3.4 GW of offgrid PV, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Total installed renewables capacity hit a remarkable 2,563.8 GW, with hydropower remaining the dominant source at 1,310.9 GW, followed by wind at 622.7 GW.
Combined clean energy capacity reached 2,536.8 GW at the end of December, with hydropower and wind remaining the largest sources at 1,310.2 GW and 622.7 GW, respectively. Solar installations, including PV and concentrated solar power (CSP), continue to lag slightly behind wind, with a cumulative installed capacity of 586.4 GW. CSP represented 6.27 GW of the total, while grid-connected PV accounted for 580.1 GW.
Cumulative count
Asia is the part of the world with the largest share of PV capacity, at 330.1 GW of cumulative installed capacity. China is the largest market in the region with 205.7 GW of cumulative installations, followed by Japan with 61.8 GW, India with 34.8 GW, and South Korea with 10.5 GW.
Europe had 138.2 GW of installed solar power by the end of 2019, with 129.8 GW installed in the European Union. Germany is still the continent’s largest market with 49.9 GW, followed by Italy at 20.9 GW, the United Kingdom with 13.3 GW, France with 10.5 GW, and Spain with 8.6 GW.
In North America, total grid-connected PV capacity reached 68.2 GW at the end of December. About 60.5 GW was installed in the United States, followed by 4.8 GW in Mexico and 3.3 GW in Canada.
In Central America and the Caribbean, cumulative grid-connected PV capacity reached 2.1 GW. The largest markets in the region are Honduras (511 MW), Dominican Republic (293 MW), Panama (242 MW), and El Salvador (237 MW). In South America, the largest markets are Chile and Brazil, with 2.6 GW and 2.4 GW of cumulative installations, respectively. The continent’s cumulative installed PV capacity stood at 6.46 GW by the end of December.
In the Middle East, total PV capacity reached 5.14 GW. The region’s solar champions are the United Arab Emirates and Israel, with 1.7 GW and 1.1 GW of respective cumulative installations.
Africa’s cumulative total reached 6.36 GW at the end of 2019, IRENA said. The Eurasian region – including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Georgia and Turkey – cumulatively reached 7.14 GW. Oceania’s accumulated total reached 16.23 GW, led by Australia with 15.9 GW.
New installations
The world added 97.1 GW of new PV capacity in 2019, according to IRENA.
China remained the world’s largest market with around 30 GW of new solar capacity. Asia as a whole added approximately 56 GW of new capacity in the year to the end of December.
Europe and North America installed 19 GW and 11.2 GW of new solar, respectively. About 1.2 GW and 2 GW of capacity was also deployed in Africa and the Middle East, respectively.
Central America and South America recorded 421 MW and 1.2 GW of new installations, respectively, while Oceania and Eurasia added 4.7 GW and 1.5 GW, respectively.
Standalone PV
IRENA reported that cumulative offgrid solar capacity reached 3.43 GW at the end of December.
Asia is still the leading region for offgrid PV with 1.91 GW deployed. India, China, and Bangladesh host most of this capacity at 1.1 GW, 394 MW, and 209 MW, respectively.
Other global hot spots for offgrid PV include Africa, with 997 MW of installed power, followed by the Middle East with 299 MW.
Enormous solar PV success with 20 years of EEG
[Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz/Renewable Energy Law]
Overall, the costs per kWp output of a PV system have fallen from over €12,000 at the end of the 1990s, to “from €500/kWp in large megawatt systems.” The prices per kWh of solar power have fallen from over 50 euro cents/kWh for all small plants in 2000, to entry prices in megawatt plants of 1.5 cents/kWh (Dubai) and below 4 euro cents/kWh in Germany.
The world market has become more attractive due to the German EEG. Global installations have risen from around 500 MW in 2000, to over 123 GW in 2019. Production capacities will continue to be massively expanded, so that by 2021, we will already have over 200 GW of “state of the art” production capacity. We can also expect to add 500 GW per year in this decade, which would be a thousand times the amount added in 2000. Thanks to photovoltaics, which Germany has helped to bring so cheaply to the market, over 100 million people already have affordable and reliable access to electricity for the first time. The living conditions of these people are improving considerably as a result, and the expansion of decentralized solar plants is continuing to accelerate.
Only a few billion to go. With mobile phones and broadband. Free educational software and digital textbooks, too, in a multitude of languages. Never mind bridging the Digital Divide of old, we are going to obliterate it. Lovely word, o-blit-er-ate. I have grown very fond of it.