In 2020, the entirety of global power generation growth came from renewable sources. It's a first, for many reasons. But, it's also only part of the global story, and what comes next is even more interesting. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, global power generation fell only two-tenths of a percent for all of 2020. Coal-fired power generation fell 3% year on year; gas-fired power fell 1%, and nuclear power declined 3%. Wind, solar, and hydropower all grew. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
It's worth zooming out on this chart a bit though. coal’s contribution to power generation growth is very evident through 2014 and again in 2017 and 2018. Natural gas power growth is also evident as are the steady additions of wind and solar power. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
And unfortunately for power sector emissions, nuclear power’s massive post-Fukushima drop in 2011 and 2012 is unmistakable. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Aggregate the global growth in power generation by source, and there's something noteworthy. Yes, coal leads, but only barely over gas; and gas is only barely past wind. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
And - the compound growth rate in generation from these technologies matters. A lot. Big base number, low growth. Smaller base number, higher growth. Coal grew 1.6% per year last decade. Solar grew 38.8% a year. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
What happens if you carry these generation CAGRs forward? In just one more year (2021) at this rate, wind (not coal or gas) would be biggest contributor to power generation since 2010. In three more years (2023)...it's solar. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
It may seem imaginative to suggest that in one year’s time wind will be the biggest contributor to power generation growth since 2010, and solar the biggest just two years later. It's not. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Seeing wind and solar's dominance of net power generation additions in a few years is the opposite of imaginative: it requires only an assumption that the next few years looks like the last decade /end bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Good morning. 🧵on aggregated US power generation interconnection queues. 1/ there is a lot of solar. 674 Gigawatts worth, 42% of it with storage.
There’s also 250GW of wind, 75GW Of gas, 6.3GW of nuclear, 900 megawatts of coal. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
🧵 on aggregated US power generation interconnection queues. 2/ the further west you go, the more solar+storage there is. Almost no standalone solar plants planned for California. Few in the rest of the west. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
🧵 on aggregated US power generation interconnection queues. 3/ solar resource quality peaked about a decade ago. Not a surprise. Only so many ideal high desert sites out there. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
🧵2/ New @BloombergNEF Zero-Emission Vehicles report:
Battery electrics 71% of sales, Plug-in hybrids 29%, you can guess where fuel cell vehicles end up about.bnef.com/blog/zero-emis…
"We are in a period of unprecedented energy diversity, with many technologies with global average costs around $100/MWh competing for dominance." cell.com/joule/fulltext…
"The prices of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas are volatile, but after adjusting for inflation, prices now are very similar to what they were 140 years ago, and there is no obvious long-range trend." cell.com/joule/fulltext…
"In contrast, for several decades the costs of solar photovoltaics (PV), wind, and batteries have dropped (roughly) exponentially at a rate near 10% per year." cell.com/joule/fulltext…
Quick 🧵on @salesforce announced Net Zero Marketplace.
It raises a major (potentially existential) question for voluntary carbon markets: what is the rate-limiting step for 100x greater scale? salesforce.com/news/stories/s…
🧵2/ Is *carbon offsets availability* the rate-limiting step to 100x greater scale in voluntary carbon markets?
If so, that's a development/origination response: more developers, more places, with more access. salesforce.com/news/stories/s…
🧵3/ Is *carbon offsets quality* the rate-limiting step to 100x greater scale in voluntary carbon markets?
If so, that's a monitoring/verification/reporting response: better data, clearer protocols, more transparency salesforce.com/news/stories/s…
Some news from me: 15 years ago, I joined a little UK startup called New Energy Finance. Now, I'm stepping into a new role for @BloombergNEF + @climate: more writing, less operations, and more engagement across the wide world of climate technology founders, funders, and builders.
So much has happened in climate tech and markets since 2007: orders of magnitude improvements in technology and orders of magnitude more deployment; $ trillions of investment and trade; industries changed, value created. Oh - and 30% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions since 1751
What's next: more of the same, if you're a regular @climate reader; new things, if you're a @BloombergNEF client; and more projects and collaborations for anyone interested in bending our current climate curves, and shaping new positive ones too.