L R AS Published on Tuesday 5 April 2022 - n° 400 - Categories:various sectors
Incentives to install photovoltaics No. 3 (IRENA)
Solar energy installations must reach 5.2 TW (5,200 GW) by 2030 if the Paris climate target of 1.5°C is to be met (compared to the original terawatt (TW) installed worldwide in February 2022), according to IRENA. This requires a threefold increase in annual installations
and increase from 126 GW installed in 2020 to 444 GW each year until 2050.
Asia, North America and Europe will have installed 80% of the world's plants. Asia will add 210 GW per year of solar power over the decade. North America will need to install 90 GW per year until 2030 and Europe 55 GW each year. These developments will cost $1 trillion a year until 2030, with more than a third of that (US$338 billion) for solar PV alone, more than tripling the investment in this technology.
Obstacles will slow down this solar realisation such as grid connection and flexibility, lack of skilled workers and unfavourable policy frameworks.
The price of power purchase agreements (PPAs) has fallen in recent years. According to IRENA, PPA prices for 2022 average $0.04/kWh, almost a third lower than coal, the cheapest fossil competitor, with several projects since 2018 having electricity costs below $0.02/kWh in the Middle East.
Solar PV and wind alone will provide 42% of total electricity generation by 2030, it is currently at 10%.
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-pv-installs-to-reach-5200gw-by-2030-to-meet-1-5c-paris-climate-goal/
PV Tech of 30 March 2022
Editor's note: IRENA has set a global installation target of 5.2 TW by 2030. Why this amount? Where does it come from? Does it take into account the future needs of consumers? How much more than the current demand? Or is it the current demand for electricity that constitutes the 5.2 TW target? The vagueness of this body's assumptions discredits it.
Furthermore, at a time when China is restricting panel deliveries, under the pretext of silicon shortages, economic disruption due to the pandemic, or energy limitations in China, and at a time when the Chinese government is restricting the delivery of panels, the question is whether it will be able to meet the target.Why doesn't IRENA say that it is a good idea for the Chinese government to take a stand against the use of solar panels?
Why doesn't IRENA say how we could triple (from 126 GW installed in 2020, to 444 GW to be installed by 2022) when there are not enough panels produced, there is a pandemic going on in China, there are not enough ships to transport them.
It is easy to use unsubstantiated claims to warn of a danger. It is always said that realism and concreteness are the best weapons to convince. Clearly, this is not IRENA's expertise.
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Other text on the IRENA study
According to IRENA, the world will need 5.2 TW of solar energy capacity by 2030 to avoid a climate catastrophe. Yet the world is "woefully" short of capping the temperature rise at 1.5°C, and added: "Progress in all energy uses has been woefully inadequate."
The world will need to install 450 GW of new solar capacity each year - most of it utility-scale - for the rest of this decade, with China and India expected to lead Asia to a share of about half of the world's installed PV capacity by 2030.
We will need to start spending $5.7 trillion a year on the energy transition for the rest of the decade.
This is achievable if the $700 billion per year spent on fossil fuels is immediately diverted to the transition, the study says. Public investment in the transition would also have to double immediately, Irena says, to attract the rest of the needed funds from the private sector, which would bear the bulk of the financial burden.
PV Magazine of 29 March 2022
Editor's note These figures make one wonder how serious IRENA is. This is an agency that wants to promote renewable energy and therefore has an obvious bias to say that not enough is being done for solar or wind power. IRENA is paid to avoid facing up to the situation and to talk only about renewable energies
Of course renewables are essential, but IRENA does not look at how to achieve its recommendations for installations, or whether the industrial capacities are available. It is not enough to say "we need to..." "we just have to ..."
Finally, we don't know where these figures come from. Given the organisation's tropism, there is nothing to say that it has not added a zero or two to the figures presented
