Solar and wind energy could replace fossil fuels entirely to become the world’s predominant power source by 2050, says a new report from climate think tank, Carbon Tracker.
It also predicted that if wind and solar power continued on their current growth trajectory, they would push fossil fuels out of the electricity sector by the mid-2030s.
Current technology gave the world the power to capture 6,700 Petawatt hours (PWh) of power from solar and wind energy, researchers claimed – more than 100 times the amount of energy consumed globally in 2019.
Despite the potential for vast amounts of energy to be harvested, just 0.7 PWh of solar power and 1.4 PWh of wind energy was generated in 2019, according to the report.
However, its authors were confident that continued falling costs were likely to drive exponential growth in the generation of solar and wind power. An annual growth rate of 15% would see solar and wind generating all of the world’s electricity by the mid-2030s and providing all energy worldwide by 2050.
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The report said that the cost of solar power had declined by an average of 18 percent per year since 2010, while wind power prices had fallen by an average of 9 percent every year in the same period.
Solar power had grown at an average annual rate of 39 percent over the last decade, almost doubling in capacity every two years, according to the report. Meanwhile, wind energy had grown in capacity by 17 percent a year, with advances like better panels and higher turbines helping to reduce costs.
This presents some cheering news as rising temperatures is predicted could cost the global economy over $23 trillion by 2050 and poor countries like Nigeria will be particularly hard hit from fall in crop yields and rising seas which will consume coastal cities.
According to a study by Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest providers of insurance to other insurance companies, the effect of climate change is expected to shave 11 percent to 14 percent off global economic output by 2050. The research states that this is a real scenario if temperature increases stay on the current trajectory, and both the Paris
Agreement and 2050 net-zero emissions targets are not met.
Carbon Tracker’s researchers identified four key groups of countries based on their potential to harness power from wind and solar to meet domestic demand.
Low-income countries with low energy use in sub-Saharan Africa were named “superabundant,” meaning they had the potential to generate at least 1,000 times more energy than their domestic demand.
Africa in particular had a lot of potential when it came to implementing renewable energy infrastructure, the report claimed, with researchers saying the region could become a “renewables superpower.”
Those with the potential to harness at least 100 times more energy than was in demand were named “abundant” countries. Australia, Chile and Morocco, which had well-developed infrastructure and governance, were categorized as “abundant.”
China, India and the U.S., which had the potential to produce enough to satisfy their domestic demand, were “replete” countries, while Japan, South Korea and much of Europe were “stretched” when it came to tapping their renewable resources effectively.
