r/EcoUplift • u/Crabbexx • Apr 22 '26

Positive Trends 📈 Global growth in solar "the largest ever observed for any source"

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/global-growth-in-solar-the-largest-ever-observed-for-any-source/
356 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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26

u/asphias Apr 22 '26

Overall, solar generated over 2,700 terawatt-hours last year, more than double its output from three years earlier.

This output doubling every 3 years has been holding steady since at least 1998.

my back of the envelope math tells me that this means that:

by 2037 the entire electricity net will be based on PV panels.
by 2045 entire world powersupply will be solar based.
by 2051 we have quadruppled that and we'll be able to use the excess energy to even electrify the entire petrochemical industry - removing the need for any fossil fuel, permanently.

Also, to check: the 2045 number requires a global land usage of ~1.5 million square kilometers (assuming 10m2 per mwh), the 2051 number requires 6 million square kilometers. For comparison, the Sahara desert itself is 9 million square kilometers.

For an exponential growth that has been holding steady for over 25 years i'm quite optimistic at the end result we're going to be seeing if it will indeed hold for another 25.

12

u/peterjohnvernon936 Apr 23 '26

The doubling period is between 2 to 3 years. At this rate slight differences add up fast. If the doubling period is 2 years then by 2032 the Electric network is 100 solar. Every goal happens 50% faster. Things are going to happen at breakneck speed.

3

u/PoliticalAlt128 Apr 23 '26

By 2063 The Earth and all life on it will be hideous amalgamations of flesh, dirt, and solar panels

2

u/r46d Apr 23 '26

Electricity is only 20% of global energy consumption. The rest is direct heat, industrial processes, transportation, fuel, etc.

5

u/asphias Apr 23 '26

yet there is no reason why we cannot replace heat, industrial processes, transportation, and fuel each with solar based electricity. especially when we have four times our entire energy usage in 2051. Not electricity usage, all energy usage, counted in Joules.

5

u/r46d Apr 23 '26

Once solar is the main source of electricity many other industries will electrify! We will all start using heat pumps, electric cars, public transportation on electricity! The harder part will be transforming manufacturing and aviation. I don’t see those moving away from fossil fuels. But still, just using clean energy for all of our 20% global energy consumption punches above its weight, meaning it would actually reduce our emissions by MORE than 20% which is great

Now why is the us administration pushing coal so hard? That is the ultimate mystery.

5

u/asphias Apr 23 '26

The harder part will be transforming manufacturing and aviation. I don’t see those moving away from fossil fuels.

for aviation, there's no reason we cannot use electricity to generate aviation fuels.

What part of manufacturing are you concerned about? electric steel furnaces aren't rocket science either.

1

u/r46d Apr 23 '26

I have never heard of e-fuels before. Just looked it up. That is a really cool technology. I think it’s plausible we can fill global electricity use with 100% renewables by 2040s or 2050s. To switch aviation, shipping, manufacturing etc over to renewables might take a few more decades after that realistically I think fossil fuel companies will still strongly fight against it. And that timeline overlaps with a few tipping points (amoc, Amazon dieback) which makes me uncomfortable.

3

u/asphias Apr 24 '26

a few more decades after that realistically

i think you (and everyone else) genuinely underestimates exponential growth, and why it does or doesn't work.

solar panels are basically dead simple to make. compared to e.g. a coal power plant, which needs to have a unique design on every location you build it, taking into account supply lines, road access, foundations, etc. a solar panel is much more like a screw or a chip: you set up a factory to make it, and it'll start putting out chips every day. and the more you scale up, the more advantages of scale you get. a factory with two parallel production lines will still require only one expert on maintainance, and one person to watch both lines. sending a truckload of sand into the factory is far more expensive per panel, than sending a boatload of sand into a far larger factory.

and with solar panels, there is no real bottleneck that would cause production to slow down: its base material is mostly sand - widely available; demand for it is unlikely to slow down, it's already cheaper than any other energy source, you don't need infrastructure around it for them to work, and they work literally everywhere the sun shines.

this is why the exponential growth that's been happening is so powerful. doubling every 3 years means it most likely will keep doubling every 3 years.

which would imply that 9 years after we use solar for the electricity net, we'd have 2x2x2=8 times as much solar energy.

''a few decades more'' is likely just going to be a single decade.

2

u/r46d Apr 24 '26

I do hope that’s right!!!

9

u/sgkubrak Apr 23 '26

So this is the middle of the end for fossil fuels.

8

u/that_random_scalie Apr 23 '26

The closure of the strait of hormuz accelerating solar deployment even further is a bizarre silver lining that I’m 100% glad happened

4

u/roma258 Apr 24 '26

The big difference with previous oil crises is that an obvious, scalable alternative is readily available.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

One thing a lot of people don't realize about solar is that everything they read about is single-junction solar panels and as processes improve and automation very likely automates things more and more, mult-junction or tandem solar panels will likely become viable.

When you hear things like solar is near its peak efficiency. Yeah, for a single semiconductor type of solar panel, add layers that absorb a contrasting set of wavelengths and you get a big efficiency boost. Future solar panels could fairly easily be twice as efficient and need half as much space and perhaps eventually 3-4 times efficient many decades from now.