Global Progress Toward Renewable Electricity: Tracking the Role of Solar

Abstract

Renewable electricity is growing rapidly, with solar electricity growing relatively faster than any other fuel source in the last ten years. As the world accelerates its transition to clean energy, it is useful to track the rate of growth, but the data are tracked in different ways from different sources. This periodic publication collects data from multiple sources and presents it systematically as a convenient reference for IEEE JPV readers.

On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research

“…Research indicates that renewable electricity and energy efficiency in combination with an energy system re-design will play a dominant role in the transition due to its low-cost, high efficiency, wide applicability, mature technologies, and vast access to renewable resources [13], [14], [15], [16]. In the past, bioenergy and hydropower were considered the most important, whereas the strongest growth today is observed in solar and wind energy [17], [18]. While solar and wind energy are also expected to dominate 100% RE system solutions on the global average [19], other renewable resources could play a dominant role in individual countries or regions.…”

Tunable Photovoltaics: Adapting Solar Cell Technologies to Versatile Applications

“…Urged by the environmental risks due to the burning of fossil fuels, the reliance on non-renewable energy resources must dwindle toward a transition to long-term sustainability in the global energy systems. [1][2][3][4] This accelerates the progressive deployment of clean and renewable energy resources such as designs are developed to provide customized solar PV with tunable properties in a controlled manner.…”

“…Urged by the environmental risks due to the burning of fossil fuels, the reliance on non‐renewable energy resources must dwindle toward a transition to long‐term sustainability in the global energy systems. [ 1–4 ] This accelerates the progressive deployment of clean and renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, to enable a steady mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing the planetary climate change and global warming. [ 5–7 ] Additionally, due to the economic development and the worldwide urbanization, a continuous rise of the global energy consumption across all key sectors, that is, power, heating, industry, and transport is occurring.…”

“…[ 6,13–15 ] The rapid universal deployment of PV resulted in a contribution of about 3.4% in the worldwide electricity generation in 2020. [ 3 ] Presently, the global installed PV capacity is approaching 1 TW and it is envisioned to reach ≈10 TW by 2030 and 30 to 70 TW by 2050. [ 16 ] Interestingly, along with massive electricity production using conventional solar power plants and rooftop solar panels, ancillary concepts of PV offer new strategies for supplying modern systems in versatile applications.…”

“…[8] The share of total renewables power generation excluding hydropower exceeded 3000 TWh in 2020, corresponding to almost 12% of the global electricity generation. [3] Considering an effective synergy between various sustainable energy candidates, solar photovoltaics (PV) have demonstrated great capabilities that can satisfy the requirements in the pathway towards 100% renewable electricity. [9][10][11][12] Owing to the research and development activities over the last decades, the power conversion efficiencies of solar cells (SC) have skyrocketed with a prolonged operation lifetime (>15 years) and a drastic plummeting in manufacturing costs (global average module selling price below $0.25 per W).…”