Solar Energy – 2050

Solar energy is all set to continue its spectacular growth in the future continuing the trend it has shown over the last decade. As per IRENA, solar energy will see investments of more than USD 6 trillion over the next three decades leading to a 18x multiple of current solar capacity from 480 GW now to more than 8000 GW by 2050 driven by continuous price decrease whose average will fall as low as 1 cents/unit by 2050 from around 8.4 cents now.

Solar energy will also provide 25% of the total electricity supply by 2050 as it becomes the mainstay energy source. All regions globally will see a sharp growth with climate change mitigation also being supported with a total effect of 4.9 gigatonnes of carbon reduction due to the increasing usage and replacement of power sources by clean and green solar energy. Asia would be the leader in solar energy with almost 4837 GW of solar energy capacity expected to be installed by 2050 led by India and China. North America would have the second-largest installed capacity at around 15000 GW followed by Europe.

Solar Vs Fossil Fuel generation

Solar prices would come down to extremely low levels of just 1-5 cents/unit. This seems too high to me considering that recent auctions of solar energy in places like Peru, Dubai and Saudi Arabia are already seeing LCOE prices of around 2-3 cents/kWh. Given that solar energy predictions have almost always fallen way short of the actual achievement, I would expect both the solar energy capacity as well as prices to be much better than what is being predicted by the IRENA report.

Also, read our earlier article on What will happen to the Solar Industry in 2014 and Beyond

Solar will make up a gargantuan 60% of the global power capacity by 2050 which means that coal and gas might disappear given the negative effect they have on the environment as well as their role in increasing carbon emissions which has become a hot topic today in terms of climate change being one of the biggest threats to humanity.