Bloomberg solar PV update. Steady growth but not enough to meet the goals of the recent IPCC update

Bloomberg's latest global solar update includes their expectations out to 2030. They expect reasonable growth but no exceptional change that would reflect the world taking the latest IPCC warnings seriously or the US actually attaining the ambitious goals of the Biden administration. 

Bloomberg provides a factual business and market perspective on clean energy. This makes their projections more objective than many such as those from the IEA, EIA, or BP, which are more political and goal oriented projections that are influenced by either save the planet or climate denial interests.

Factual global reporting on where the money comes from, where it goes, and what clean energy it buys exposes wishful thinking and is immensely valuable. This value is enhanced because the data is continuously updated and has been for decades which allows for a reasonable projection of trends into the future based on insight rather than simple linear extrapolation. 

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The past decade has shown that while the major markets in China, Europe and the US have waxed and waned, the global market has shown sustained growth in Solar PV capacity while maintaining a constant clean energy expenditure of around $300B/y. Bloomberg's projection to 2030 shows an expectation of similar behaviour, with $/W cost continuing to decline enabling capacity growth within a fairly constant budget. 

In the US, the Biden administration has ambitious goals, but faces strong political headwinds from moderate Democrats within and Republicans without. History would not predict a significant change in the status quo. China has stabilized its internal deployments and only seeks to expand its exports. Europe has goals but is nowhere near the needed growth to decarbonize. The Bloomberg 2030 forecast appears to be highly realistic.

​Given the political and financial realities that this projection embodies, breaking this impasse will likely take a technological solution that relaxes these constraints. Fusion energy were it to succeed would be one such possibility that has shown some recent improvement in its prospects but is still a long shot. Stratosolar is another possible new approach but less risky, cheaper and quicker to demonstrate feasibility. 

By Edmund Kelly

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