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Interesting. Looking at the same graph - especially when you tweak it to show only the last decade - you'll see solar is growing very quickly (25% YoY) while th

Interesting. Looking at the same graph - especially when you tweak it to show only the last decade - you'll see solar is growing very quickly (25% YoY) while the others stay fairly stable. That would have it overtaking oil in 20 years. Considering we're going to see mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next 5-20 years I think that will happen even more quickly.

Aicy 5y ago
Only if you assume that the growth is expoential / compounding. I don't know much about the field, but given the vast investments and land needed for country level solar projects I would argue the growth rate is much more likely to be linear, in which case it looks like it won't be overtaking oil this century. It's relatively easy to make large percentage gains when the current amount is so small.
- gregwebs 5y ago
  Solar already hit a supply shock this year that has increased the cost of installation (it has been reliably going down before this). Solar growth is expected to be closer to just linear this year. I hope this is temporary due to all the supply shocks going on right now. Looking longer-term there will be growth slow-down when wind/solar reaches a larger scale due to the intermittent nature of the energy unless we can figure out how to deal with this. Currently dealing with it requires lots of gas peaker plants, hydro (which has its own environmental damages) or batteries (the resources required to produce and continually replace these are not sustainable but hopefully the net carbon emission can stay low). Malaysia recently had to stop incentivizing solar because their grid couldn't handle it.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    There was a similar price shock back around 2010 (?) due to polysilicon shortage. After the hand wringing about how the learning curve was over, capacity increased, and prices continued downward, making up for lost time.
gregwebs 5y ago
I want to point out that overtaking oil doesn't mean displacing it. History described in this chart predicts that the best we can hope for is that oil usage will very slowly decline like biomass or coal. I point this out not because I think this history must be our destiny, but instead to raise awareness that much more must be done to avoid that destiny.

Aicy 5y ago

Only if you assume that the growth is expoential / compounding. I don't know much about the field, but given the vast investments and land needed for country level solar projects I would argue the growth rate is much more likely to be linear, in which case it looks like it won't be overtaking oil this century. It's relatively easy to make large percentage gains when the current amount is so small.

gregwebs 5y ago
Solar already hit a supply shock this year that has increased the cost of installation (it has been reliably going down before this). Solar growth is expected to be closer to just linear this year. I hope this is temporary due to all the supply shocks going on right now. Looking longer-term there will be growth slow-down when wind/solar reaches a larger scale due to the intermittent nature of the energy unless we can figure out how to deal with this. Currently dealing with it requires lots of gas peaker plants, hydro (which has its own environmental damages) or batteries (the resources required to produce and continually replace these are not sustainable but hopefully the net carbon emission can stay low). Malaysia recently had to stop incentivizing solar because their grid couldn't handle it.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  There was a similar price shock back around 2010 (?) due to polysilicon shortage. After the hand wringing about how the learning curve was over, capacity increased, and prices continued downward, making up for lost time.

gregwebs 5y ago

I want to point out that overtaking oil doesn't mean displacing it. History described in this chart predicts that the best we can hope for is that oil usage will very slowly decline like biomass or coal. I point this out not because I think this history must be our destiny, but instead to raise awareness that much more must be done to avoid that destiny.