Solar will leap four-fold by 2030, ending the rule of King coal and overtaking all other grid supplies

The International Energy Agency has a history of underestimating the growth of wind and solar, but a deep dive into its latest World Energy Outlook highlights the speed and scale of the global energy transition now being predicted by one of its most skeptical observers.

As Renew Economy reported last week, the WEO has documented a rapid increase in the rollout of wind and solar in the last year, to the point where it is now closer than ever to the latest global commitment to treble the amount of renewables by the end of the decade.

A deeper analysis of the data by Carbon Brief highlights the extraordinary role that solar – thanks to its still plunging technology costs – is playing in this accelerating transition.

It notes that the IEA is predicting a four-fold increase in the solar generation across the globe, so much so that it will bring the growth of coal to a halt possibly as early as next year.

Solar generation across the globe in coming years will overtake both nuclear and hydro in 2026, and then gas by 2031. In 2033, solar generation is forecast to overtake coal to become the world’s biggest single source of electricity.

By 2050, the report says, solar generation will be higher than coal, gas, nuclear and hydro combined, and produce twice as much as global wind power.

The key figures and assumptions are summed up in this graph published by Carbon Brief using the IEA data included in the latest WEO.

It’s important to consider in the context of the current political debate around energy in Australia, and the claims made by the federal and some state Coalitions that nuclear is in the midst, or at least poised, to experience some sort of renaissance.

The IEA doesn’t think so. It predicts some new investment, and some slow increase in output over the next two and a half decades, but the near term focus is on the very technologies that the Australian Coalition vows to stop – wind and solar.

That is crucial because these are the two technologies essential to meet the urgent climate targets and the need to cut emissions in the short term, not the long term. It’s why the last climate COP put so much store in the pledge to treble renewables by the end of the decade. The IEA report has the world currently on track to increase it 2.7 fold.

IEA secretary general Fatih Birol talks of the Age of Coal and the Age of Oil being replaced by the Age of Electricity, an highlighted not just by the growing dominance of wind and solar, but also by the growth of electric transport and the improved efficiency.

According to Carbon Brief, the IEA now sees global solar capacity exceeding 16,000GW by 2050, some 30 per cent higher than expected last year and a standing 11-times more than it thought in 2015.

Indeed, by 2023, the world had already installed 1,610GW of solar capacity – more than the 1,405GW of capacity that the IEA had forecast in 2015 would be installed in 2050. It seems that the federal Coalition in Australia, nearly a decade on, remains under the same delusion.