The sudden exponential rise of solar

As of sometime last year, for the first time since 1919, coal was dethroned as the world’s biggest producer of electricity – overtaken by renewable energy sources. 

Those clean-energy sources are all growing. For years, wind has dominated the category, and it is still growing solidly. But solar blew past it last year like a Roadster past a quail on a prairie highway. 

The growth of solar has been mathematically exponential for over 30 years – doubling about every three years. Put another way, it took solar 68 years to build to its  first  terawatt of power. The second took 33 months. The third 19 months. It’s now almost 10 percent of total global electricity generation and the primary driver of electricity expansion.

The cost of solar cells has dropped about 90 percent in the past decade.

The industry relies on batteries which have also dropped in cost by 90 percent in that time, while improving vastly in safety and useful life.

Solar is everywhere. It’s surging in Africa, where it’s mostly bringing new access to electricity or replacing diesel generators. It’s surging in the Arctic, because it doesn’t have to be warm to be sunny, and double-sided panels can also use sunlight reflected off the snowpack.

This does not mean that coal use has gone down. But global emissions from the power sector have stopped growing. They declined very slightly last year and are flatlined so far this year.

Sources: Ember; PV Magazine; RateWatt; Carbon Brief; Bloomberg