Nuclear power makes up an ever-shrinking portion of global power generation, despite claims from COP 28 and corporate and tech giants pushing a nuclear “renaissance” as the “energy wave of the future.” In contrast, in its June 22 solar special issue, The Economist reported that solar power is on track to outpace all other sources of electricity globally in the next decade. According to a July article in The Conversation, “installed solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past ten years,” and, “the next tenfold increase will be the equivalent of multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight, in less time than it usually takes to build one of them.”
Twenty years ago, it took a year to install a single gigawatt of solar capacity, and this year, it is predicted that global solar capacity will expand by one gigawatt a day. One of the biggest challenges facing solar is battery production, which requires critical minerals lithium, nickel, and cobalt. These minerals are environmentally harmful to mine and sourcing is often rife with human rights abuses and unjust economic boon for countries where this mining takes place. But the efficiency of batteries has increased dramatically in the last thirty years, and with improvements to the technology it becomes more practical to implement storage for solar energy. According to the International Energy Agency, global renewable energy capacity will need to triple in the next five years to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
— The Conversation, July 4; The Economist, June 22, 2024
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