World Trending To Hit 50% Renewables, 11% Coal By 2050: Report (arstechnica.com)

Bloomberg New Energy Finance released a new report this week that estimates how electricity generation will change out to 2050. ArsTechnica: The clean energy analysis firm estimates that in a mere 33 years, the world will generate almost 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and coal will make up just 11 percent of the total electricity mix. Add in hydroelectric power and nuclear energy, and greenhouse-gas-free electricity sources climb to 71 percent of the world's total electricity generation. The report doesn't offer a terribly bright future for nuclear, however, and after a period of contraction, the nuclear industry's contribution to electricity generation is expected to level off. Instead, falling photovoltaic (PV), wind, and battery costs will cause the dramatic shift in investment, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) notes. "PV and wind are already cheaper than building new large-scale coal or gas plants," the 2018 report says. In addition, BNEF expects that more than $500 billion will be invested in batteries by 2050, with two-thirds of that investment going to installations on the grid and one-third of that investment happening at a residential level.

Comments

Re:Never taken into account by alarmists

[JoshuaZ]

This inevitable increase in use of alternative energy is never taken into account by climate models that assume an ever increasing generation of CO2.

This is just false. For example, the IPCC reports have a variety of different scenarios each based on different levels of CO2 https://ipcc.ch/pdf/special-reports/spm/sres-en.pdf is a good place to start. Unfortunately, even given these emissions levels, the damage is going to be severe. We need to do a lot more than we're doing.

Re: Hydroelectric power and Nuclear Energy??

[LynnwoodRooster]

Other than 2.5X the power than all renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal) combined, and at a lower cost. Not to mention it's basically 100% uptime. But yeah, other than massive amounts of highly reliable, affordable power, nuclear has done nothing!

Re:Hydroelectric power and Nuclear Energy??

[Farmer Tim]

Lithium is ideal for portable devices because of high energy density, but for a building sized battery permanently connected to the grid size and weight is no longer critical...that means a more abundant element (sodium for example) is a practical, cheaper alternative despite lower energy density.

Re:Yes. This is not fast enough transition

[Maxo-Texas]

Just so you know... It's already too late.

We blew thru the 1 degree Celsius "budget" a few years ago. We blew thru the 1.5 degree Celsius budget recently. To avoid 2 degrees Celsius increase, we would have to get our carbon output down under 13 gigatons per year immediately and for every year between now and 2100. We are currently at about 26 gigatons per year (which is down about 11 gigatons from 37 gigatons per year back in 2001 but the easy gains have been made).

So we will blow thru the 2.0 degree celsius budget by 2024 or 2025. So temperatures will increase by over 2 degrees celsius (barring some new unforeseen problems with multiple models).

At this point, we need to invent something that will sequester gigatons of carbon per year. One possibility is a sand replacement made from carbon used to build new construction (we are also running out of sand fast. Desert sand can't be used- it's spherical- river sand is trapezoids). If we tried covering the planet with trees, it would only buy us about 2.5 gigatons a year.