The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) published its 2023 report recently. summary here, that shows continued industry growth but at a rate far too slow to produce an energy system decarbonization in the timeframes required to limit dangerous climate change; commercial success and existential failure. The report tends to highlight the rate of growth in yearly new capacity, as that represents new sales to the industry. This is estimated to grow at a compound rate of 15% through 2030, a doubling rate of 5 years. With respect to emissions though, it is the growth in the overall installed capacity that is important, and that is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of just 11%; a doubling rate of 7 years.
The global capacity of wind energy in 2021 was 830 Gigawatts (GW) and grew 78 GW in 2022 and is forecast to grow 115 GW in 2023, to a total of 1023 GW, 23% growth in 2 years. It is then forecast to grow 125GW, 135GW, 150GW and 157GW in the following four years, which would bring it to 1,590GW in 2027; a growth of 92% over 2021. The global output of wind power in 2021 was 1,870 TeraWatt hours (TWh), which represented 6.6% of the 28,500 TWh of global electricity production that year. If we assume that output will grow in line with the growth of installed capacity (92%), in 2027 global wind energy will produce 3,590 TWh of electricity. The long-term trend growth in global electricity production is about 2% per year, so overall global electricity production in 2027 will be 32,096 TWh. As 3,590/32,096 = 0.1118, global wind energy will be providing 11.2% of global electricity production in 2027.
BUT the absolute growth in wind energy produced electricity during the period (3,590 - 1,870 = 1,720 TWh) will be less than the absolute growth in global electricity production (32,096 - 28,500 = 3,596 TWh), even though wind energy increased its share of overall global electricity production it did not displace any other forms of electricity production due to the ongoing rise in overall electricity production. Non-wind provided electricity production will have grown by 1,876 TWh. You may say, but what about solar power too? Well, in 2021 solar power provided 3.7% of global electricity production, 1,055 TWh (from 940 GW of capacity) and the installed base is estimated to approximately triple by 2027 which will slightly more than offset that 1,876 TWh in extra electricity production. Add in some extra output from the very slow growing hydro-electric and solid-fuel renewables (e.g. pellets from forestry “waste” which many times isn’t really renewable) and a small amount of non-renewable global electricity production will be displaced. The global solar industry will be having bumper sales, but only a very small amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global electricity production will have been displaced by 2027.
BUT electricity production only produces about 25% of all global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, with the rest coming from agriculture, industry and transportation with about 15% from buildings and other sectors. Even with some actions taken in some nations, and even with the EV revolution, continued economic growth and changes to food consumption habits (from vegetables to meat) will probably drive some growth in emissions in these areas. So most probably even with the rapid growth in wind and solar energy, and EVs, GHG emissions will most probably be at or a little higher than current levels in 2027. At a time when we need to be reducing emissions by up to 10% per year.
The result will be increasing pushes for geo-engineering, most especially Solar Radiation Management (SRM) technologies to reduce the amount of the Sun’s energy getting to the Earth’s surface. Technologies never proven at scale, but governments may take the risk given the ongoing failure to cut greenhouse gases emissions and rising global temperatures; most especially if a large El Nino hits. By then hopefully, the “carbon capture” boondoggle will be shown to be the dead end that it is.
ALL electricity generation machines REQUIRE erm...... fossil fuels at EVERY stage of their manufacture, production, and decommission after their 15-25 year life spans.
And, wind & solar energy harvesting machines supply circa 4.5% of global ENERGY.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix#energy-mix-what-sources-do-we-get-our-energy-from
Trouble is EROI of fossil fuels is on average globally rapidly decreasing: in the 1940s you could get c40 barrels of oil for 1 barrel, its under 10 now and will hit 2 or 3 in a few decades or so.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/03/13/251-the-everything-crisis/
http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/
Unless you know how to mine minerals to make wind & solar (i.e. low energy density harvesting machines) in remote areas with battery powered heavy gear? Or replace diesel for heavy transport? Or build and maintain roads and bridges with batteries? Or indeed make batteries and run electric grids without fossil fuel inputs?
Or how to 'make' enough land to build low energy density harvesting machines? Wind farms require up to 360 times as much land area to produce the same amount of electricity as a nuclear energy facility and up to 750 times more land than gas.
https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants
Bottom line? Global population will go back to same as at the beginning of the fossil fuel age in c 1750s under 2 billion, by end of this century at the latest.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-decline-of-fossil-fuels-and-limits-of-renewable-energy/page/6/
https://radixuk.org/opinion/we-need-to-slow-down-the-process-of-de-growth-with-nuclear-energy/
https://archive.org/details/atomichumanismthecasefornuclearpowerv1/mode/2up
https://djprisss.github.io/Limits-to-Renewable-Energy/
Thanks for the research. (Note: you mean triple instead of treble I'm guessing...)
I am also enjoying your contributions over at MoA!