Nature Materials Science: How solar PV will be doing in 2030.

[NNadir]

The following graphic comes from Nature Materials 15, 117–120 (2016)



The graphic's caption says that so called "renewable energy" could provide 132 exajoules by 2030, when presumably we'll be pushing 420 ppm (or more) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Current human consumption is about 570 exajoules per year.

The solar industry soaks up (at current rates) over 100 billion dollars per year.

By 2030, we can expect this industry to produce about 4 exajoules.

We're saved.

[VMA131Marine]

1. Something not right with the math ...

3% of 570 exajoules is 17.1 exajoules, not 4. And, solar PV is 8% of 2030 electric power production.

[NNadir]

2. The math is fine. The graphic refers to 3% of 132 exajoules, the putative amount all forms of...

...so called "renewable energy" might produce in 2030.

If the solar industry, after more than half a century of what amounts to delusional cheering for it produced 17 exajoules, it would be respectable.

But it's not. After a trillion dollar expenditure in the last ten years, it doesn't even produce 2 exajoules.

It hasn't worked; it isn't working, and it won't work, at least on any meaningful scale.

[kristopher]

5. Never assume anything Nnadir relates on renewable or nuclear energy is true.

Time and again he has proven himself more than willing to completely falsify the meaning of research by misrepresenting snippets. This is the abstract for the current selection:
"The Paris agreement on climate change represents an important step in the design of a new global framework for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are keys for the success of this ambitious agreement."

I'm waiting for a copy of the full article. Will add to this at that time.

[VMA131Marine]

3. The IEA disagrees with this assessment of PV

IEA report Technology Roadmap: Solar Photovoltaic Energy (September 2014)[16]:1 —
Much has happened since our 2010 IEA technology roadmap for PV energy. PV has been deployed faster than anticipated and by 2020 will probably reach twice the level previously expected. Rapid deployment and falling costs have each been driving the other. This progress, together with other important changes in the energy landscape, notably concerning the status and progress of nuclear power and CCS, have led the IEA to reassess the role of solar PV in mitigating climate change. This updated roadmap envisions PV's share of global electricity rising up to 16% by 2050, compared with 11% in the 2010 roadmap. - [link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics|

[NNadir]

4. Thank you for the traditional link to a Wikipedia page. The historical performance of PV vs. ...

...wildly optimistic forecasts over the last 60 years since the invention of the photovoltaic cell in 1954, around the time of the construction of the first nuclear plant, are available.

Solar technology is a failure, but as its failures continue and grow in cost and magnitude, we get ever more optimistic rhetoric about what it could do, but never about what it has done.

What it has done is to generate so much complacency that we have now raced past 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. I'm not sure it produces enough energy to fuel all the servers dedicated to saying how great it is.

One can read lots of historical IEA reports - I've actually done this and have the full text of several in my files - and come away with the feeling that they seldom, if ever, are "right on the mark."

Amory Lovins won a McArthur fellowship award for his delusional prediction in 1976 that solar energy would providing more than 20 quads (approximately equal to exajoules) in the United States "by 2000." The entire planet, as of 2017 hasn't produced even 10% of that.

I wouldn't call two exajoules in the face of sixty years of hype as a ground for optimism.

The authors of the paper from the primary scientific literature cited in the OP have a wildly different perspective than reported in your Wikipedia link.

History suggests that even the 3% of the total so called "renewable energy" prospect is wildly optimistic.