Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind

• Solar is now growing much faster than any other energy technology in history.
• The rise and rise of cheap solar is our best hope for rapidly mitigating climate change.
• Total solar capacity tipped over 1 terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) for the first time last year.

Australia is finding the path

• All the leading countries for per capita solar and wind generation are in Europe – except Australia.
• In Australia, 99% of new generation capacity is now solar and wind because it is cheap.
• But unlike European countries, Australia cannot share electricity across national boundaries.
• And South Australia will soon become the world’s first gigawatt-scale grid to run on renewables.

Where will the era of ubiquitous solar take us?

Solar capacity has been growing at 20% a year for decades. Elimination of fossil fuels from the global economy is straightforward: electrify everything using clean electricity from solar and wind. This includes:
• To run our homes, industries and vehicles with electricity, we’ll need to double electricity production.
• If these trends continue, by mid-century we will be in a very different – and better –  energy world.
• Given electricity consumption is strongly correlated with affluence, access to cheap electricity will be a major boon for many nations.

But is it possible?

• To supply everyone with enough electricity to live a good life, we’ll need about 200 billion megawatt-hours per year (equal to 200,000 terawatt-hours per year).
• That would see global electricity consumption reach 20 megawatt-hours per person per year – double Australia’s current consumption per person.
• The main short-term bottlenecks are likely to be building enough transmission lines – and ensuring we have enough engineers and installers.

We have the space and the raw materials

• Raw materials for solar panels are abundant – silicon from sand and common metals like steel.
• There are no toxic metals or no critical materials like cobalt in them, and they are highly recyclable.
• This, in turn, will boost their resilience in the face of war, pandemics and the changing climate.
• The required area of solar panel is about five square metres per kilowatt (40 square metres total for 8 kilowatts).