Published on September 22nd, 2022

Two key findings from BP Plc’s annual deep dive on global energy statistics are that renewable electricity has grown at an extraordinary clip in the past two decades, and it still has very far to go. Solar and wind have expanded by orders of magnitude and now make up more than 10% of global electricity; that also means that these two technologies need to scale up market share by several factors — as the electricity system as a whole grows too — in order to decarbonize power substantially.

Of the two, solar is the smaller contributor, but with the faster growth rate. And what a growth rate it is. Since 2007, annual installations of photovoltaic power generation have grown from 22 gigawatts to about 240 gigawatts expected this year. That’s a compound rate of 34.5%, meaning it takes barely more than two years for annual installations to double, on average.

Original article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-07/solar-growth-estimates-for-2050-are-aggressive-but-not-unrealistic