IEA Believes Solar Can Supply 20 to 25% of World Energy by 2050

The latest in a series of global Roadmaps by the International Energy Agency (IEA) argues that solar electricity could represent up to 20%–25% of total global electricity production by 2050.

This conclusion emerges from two new analyses from the agency: the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) Roadmaps, which are designed to enable governments, industry and financial partners to implement measures to accelerate required technology development and uptake.

Highlighting the fact that the technologies will deploy in different yet complementary ways – PV mostly for on-grid distributed generation and helping to provide energy off-grid in rural areas and CSP largely providing despatchable electricity at utility-scale from regions with the brightest sun and clearest skies – collectively, PV and CSP could generate some 9000 TWh in 2050, the IEA believes.

According to the analysis, with effective policies in place, PV on residential and commercial buildings will achieve grid parity by 2020 in many regions. PV will become competitive at utility-scale in the sunniest regions by 2030 and provide 5% of global electricity by then. As PV matures into a mainstream technology, grid integration and management and energy storage are set to become key issues, the IEA says, adding that the PV industry, grid operators and utilities will need to develop new technologies and strategies to integrate large amounts of PV into flexible, efficient and smart grids. Nonetheless, by 2050, PV could provide more than 11% of global electricity, the Roadmap concludes, despite delivering just 0.1% of total global electricity generation currently.

Achieving this level of PV electricity supply – and the associated, environmental, economic and societal benefits – will require more concerted policy support, the agency says. Sustained, effective and adaptive incentive schemes are needed to help bridge the gap to PV competitiveness, along with a long-term focus on technology development that advances all types of PV technologies, including both commercially available and emerging and novel technologies.

Source:  Renewable Energy World    To read the full article   click here

The Next 40 Years

 Technology Roadmap; Solar photovoltaic energy, from the International Energy Agency (IEA), complements the simultaneously released report on concentrating solar power (CSP) described in THE WAY TO BIG SUN.   

As the IEA sees the future - together, photovoltaic (PV) solar – which uses the sun’s light – and CSP – which uses the sun’s heat – can generate over 22% of the world’s electricity by the middle of this century. PV will provide half of that, generating 11% of world electricity by 2050.

Demonstrating the IEA’s fundamentally conservative bent, the PV and CSP  Roadmaps are part of a thorough scientific, economic and policy assessment of 19 New Energy options in pursuit of identifying the best path to the IEA’s (completely inadequate) goal of a 50% reduction in world CO2 emissions by 2050.

Unlike CSP, which requires a special high-saturation type of sun, PV requires no special Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) of sunlight. It can be (and has been) put to work almost anywhere there is sunlight. World PV capacity has grown an average of 40% per year in this century and the world’s spending on PV research and development doubled in the 21st century’s first decade, from $250 million in 2000 to $500 million (in 2007). At current rates of growth and technological advancement, the IEA expects PV solar to be price competitive in the most sun-saturated parts of the world by 2020.
 

When solar PV achieves widespread cost competitiveness with other sources of grid supply, the “effective, long-term and balanced” policies that helped build manufacturing capacity and deployment will “evolve” into those that support self-sustaining PV markets. Financial incentives will phase out in favor of those that obtain and maintain grid access and integration, ongoing investment in R&D and international cooperation in building capacity for emerging economies.

Source:   Renewable Energy World    To read the full article click here.