Global PV must grow to 5,400 GW by 2030 to limit global warming
The International Renewable Energy Agency said in a recent report that the scale of the energy transition needs ‘urgent’ acceleration to meet Paris Agreement climate emergency targets. Solar PV deployment, in particular, must ramp up and increase fourfold by the end of the decade.
Global installed renewable energy power generation capacity needs to expand three-fold to 11,174 GW by the end of the decade to meet the 1.5 C Paris Agreement climate warming ceiling, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) said in a recently published report.
Solar PV capacity, in particular, needs to hit at least 5,400?GW by 2030 – a 4,345 GW increase from 2022, IRENA said in the report.
At first blush this looks like a difficult ask but, I have a spreadsheet that I did a couple years ago where I attempt to extrapolate from historical data and examine a couple of scenarios. My calculations are based on global new PV plant capacity which closely follows new PV module production capacity. I have done three projections, one based on increasing new capacity by 10% each year, another based on 17.5 increase in new capacity per year and one based on increasing new capacity by 30% per year.
Estimates for new PV Capacity in 2023 range from 270 GW (Wood-McKenzie) to 360 GW (Rethink Energy), to a range between 341 and 402 GW (Solar Power Europe). My high (30% increase) projection for 2023 was 348 GW so if current trends continue for another two years, it is virtually guaranteed that global cumulative PV capacity will exceed 2 GW by the first half of 2025 giving us a doubling time of roughly three years. Another three years would take us to 4 GW by the end of 2028. My medium growth scenario has the globe getting to 5GW cumulative PV capacity by the end of 2029 and just under 6 GW by the end of 2030.
From the looks of it the only way the world will fail to realize 5,400 GW of solar PV capacity by 2030 is for some sort of collapse in manufacturing and installation before 2030. Not impossible. Likely? Who knows? |
