Very misleading title: it should be "Solar leads global energy growth for the first time".
Still good news, but a long, long way from solar becoming the world's primary source of energy.
Very misleading title: it should be "Solar leads global energy growth for the first time".
Still good news, but a long, long way from solar becoming the world's primary source of energy.
Yes, from the source report, for total generation capacity, solar is in a distant sixth:
Coal: 10858 TWh
Natural Gas: 6822 TWh
Hydro: 4470 TWh
Nuclear: 2859 TWh
Wind: 2723 TWh
Solar: 2653 TWh
Decent growth, but still a long way to go.
> solar becoming the world's primary source of energy
Solar has always been the primary source of energy, Something like 99.95%, with geothermal taking 90% of the rest and tidal being basically zero
You can look at coal, oil, gas as form of compressed solar energy, because all of them have biological source, stored millions of year ago. It's just burning coal, oil, gas has nasty side effects.
" Volcanic coal-burning in Siberia led to climate change 252 million years ago.
Extensive burning in Siberia was a cause of the Permo-Triassic extinction " https://www.nsf.gov/news/volcanic-coal-burning-siberia-led-c...
What about nuclear?
Fuel was created by the explosion of supernovae, still solar but not our sun.
By that logic, all of the Earth and the moon were once parts of stars, so tidal and geothermal are also solar.
When people say "solar energy", they are usually referring to first order solar energy, directly from photons, not second or third order solar energy after it has been trapped into other sources of potential energy.
If it's not our sun then it isn't solar.
Pedantry I can get behind. Cheers
Probably neutron star collisions, actually.
tiny insignificant amounts
Should it be ‘solar leading energy subsidy growth’.
No chance, fossil fuels are subsidized more. A large share of solar growth is from countries like Pakistan who have had some subsidies but total dollar amount of them is trivial.
Got source?
China only ended solar panel export subsidy this month.
Pricing fossil fuel pollution at zero is the biggest subsidy in the world bar none. Contrast this with for example nuclear power, where potential pollution risks as well as storage of its spent resources are some of the biggest costs. If they were subsidized equally to fossil fuels, the costs of those would be very low, with the public simply paying the price for any negative health effects.
Oil is directly subsidized in most oil producing countries. Go look at what fuel costs in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, vs what they could sell it for on international markets. That's a subsidy.
Jet fuel is universally exempt from tax. Try finding any other energy source that is.
The US oil subsidy currently is projected to increase the Pentagon budget from one trillion to one and half. I bet one could build a lot of solar panels for 500 billion dollars, and you can use them more than once, too.
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Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022
Plus, add the entire defense budget of US + western countries, which only exists to protect oil interests.
Solar subsidies still pale in comparison to oil and gas subsidies worldwide