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Here comes the boom: Wood Mackenzie forecasts massive solar, wind, and storage growth
We are living in the boom times of renewable energy growth, as the data junkies at Wood Mackenzie often remind us. Much to the delight of those within the industry – and much to the chagrin of my dog around July 4th weekend- it sounds like we’ll be booming for the foreseeable future.
The firm’s latest analysis predicts developers will put more than 5.4 terawatts (TWac) of new solar and wind capacity online over the next decade, increasing the cumulative global total to 8 TWac.
Energy storage capacity (excluding pumped hydro) will grow by more than 600%, Wood Mackenzie predicts, as nearly 1 TW of new capacity is expected to come online from 2024-2033.
“Global demand for renewables has reached unprecedented levels, driven by country-level policy targets, technology innovation, and concerns over energy security,” stated Luke Lewandowski, vice president of global renewables research at Wood Mackenzie. “Integrated power technology solutions will continue to evolve, evidenced by a significant increase in storage-paired capacity growth, despite inflation, grid constraints, and permitting challenges.”
Annual capacity will increase from approximately 500 GW of new solar and wind capacity installed in 2023, and average 560 GW annually over the 10-year outlook. China will continue to dominate solar, energy storage, and wind uptake, with 3.5 TWac forecast to be grid-connected between 2024 and 2033, notes WoodMac’s analysis.
“Solar PV leads the deployment race, accounting for 59% of global capacity due to come online between 2024 and 2033. Energy storage will have the most balanced geographic footprint over the outlook due in part to its important role in helping to make renewable power available,” Lewandowski added.
Solar: Cumulative installed global solar PV capacity to nearly quadruple from 2024 to 2033
“Ultra-low module prices intensified the rate of solar deployments last year in Europe and China and will continue to do so in the near-term. But grid constraints and a return to lower power prices and subsequently lower capture rates will impact markets and other regions,” said Juan Monge, the principal analyst of distributed solar PV at Wood Mackenzie.
Wood Mackenzie’s global solar PV forecast projects 4.7 terawatts direct current (TWdc) will be built between 2024 and 2033, with China accounting for 50% of that capacity growth.
Monge added: “Ultimately, maximizing solar PV capacity, and wind power capacity for that matter, in the next 10 years will depend on additional technology developments: from expanding grid infrastructure to incentivizing flexibility solutions, transportation, and heating electrification.”
In 2023, drastic drops in Chinese module prices and tight deadlines to interconnect tendered projects triggered 150% annual growth for installations across all solar PV segments, the analysis explains. Year-on-year increases in annual installed capacity will continue until 2026, when Wood Mackenzie forecasts a two-year slowdown due to an expected pause in development activity before the next round of planned procurement drives higher deployment.
For installations in the first quarter, developers in the US installed more solar in the first quarter of 2024 than in all of 2019, installations in China were up 36% year-on-year, and new capacity in India through Q1 amounted to 85% total capacity installed in 2023. However, Europe’s distributed PV boom has started to weaken, with first quarter residential installations contracting more than 30% in Germany and over 50% in the Netherlands as retail rates come down.
Energy storage: Global cumulative capacity will increase sixfold by the end of 2033, passing 1 TW/3 TWh
“Global energy storage deployment in 2023 achieved record-breaking growth of 162% compared to 2022, installing 45 GW/100 GWh. While impressive, the growth represents just the start for a multi-TW market as policy support in terms of tax exemption and capacity and hybrid auctions accelerate storage buildout across all regions,” said Anna Darmani, principal analyst of energy storage at Wood Mackenzie.
The global energy storage market is on track to reach 159 GW/358 GWh by the end of 2024, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Q2 global energy storage market outlook update. Looking ahead, 926 GW/2789 GWh will be added between 2024 and 2033, marking a 636% increase.
Labour lifts Tories’ ‘absurd’ ban on onshore windfarms
By: Helena Horton - The Guardian
Rachel Reeves says she will revise planning policy and decisions should be taken nationally, not locally
The de facto ban on new onshore windfarms has been dropped by the Labour government, to the delight of environmentalists and energy experts.
The ban was caused by two footnotes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the rules that govern the building of homes and infrastructure.
These footnotes applied only to onshore wind, and no other type of infrastructure, and required such strong proof that there was no opposition locally that they made building turbines impossible, given there is nearly always some local resistance to any building proposal.
In Labour’s new draft NPPF, these footnotes have been deleted in their entirety, meaning onshore wind projects are now on an even footing with all other forms of infrastructure. The change, which comes into force immediately, will be confirmed to parliament on 18 July after the Commons resumes sitting.
Labour also announced on Monday that it would go a step further and consult on whether to designate large windfarms as nationally significant infrastructure projects, meaning that the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, would sign them off and local councils would not have a say.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced in a speech on Monday that she would end the “absurd” restriction on new windfarms and said decisions should be taken nationally, not locally.
In a policy statement, officials wrote: “Delivering our clean power mission will help boost Britain’s energy independence, save money on energy bills, support high-skilled jobs and tackle the climate crisis.
“We are therefore committed to doubling onshore wind energy by 2030. That means immediately removing the de facto ban on onshore wind in England in place since 2015. We are revising planning policy to place onshore wind on the same footing as other energy development in the National Planning Policy Framework.”
Last September Michael Gove, the then communities secretary, said the ban would be lifted. Rules put in place by David Cameron in 2015 had decreed that a single planning objection could scupper an onshore wind project. However, the offending paragraphs in the NPPF footnote remained, making building new projects almost impossible. Analysis of the government’s renewable energy planning database found that no applications for new onshore wind projects were submitted after Gove’s announcement.
The end of the ban was promised in Labour’s election manifesto and trailed by Miliband when he was shadow energy secretary, but campaigners were surprised by the speed at which it has been implemented.
Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said: “By ending the onshore wind ban in England, Labour is making an important stride towards delivering on our climate goals while also paving the way for lower bills, as renewables produce some of the cheapest and cleanest energy available.
“In April, research by Friends of the Earth found that utilising less than 3% of land in England for onshore wind and solar could produce 13 times more clean energy that now generated – enough to power all households in England twice over. By harnessing the country’s vast renewable power potential, the new government is staking its claim as a global leader in the green energy transition.”
Sam Richards, the chief executive of the pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade and a former environmental adviser to No 10, said: “The only way we are going to see the growth Britain desperately needs is if we make it significantly easier to build the homes and the new sources of clean energy needed to reach net zero.
“During the election Labour promised to fix our outdated and sclerotic planning system to just that, and with this speech the new chancellor is hitting the ground running. Lifting the ban on new onshore windfarms in England is something Britain Remade has been campaigning for since we launched, so I am delighted Rachel Reeves has dropped the ban so soon after the election.”
Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace’s chief scientist, said: “As the recent gas price crisis shows, this ban was self-defeating for energy security, costly, and lost opportunities to cut emissions. The end of the ban is well overdue.”
Source
Billionaire Investor Tom Steyer Says Clean Tech Will Win the 'Climate War'
Billionaire hedge fund manager, investor and political activist Tom Steyer has made climate change his primary focus for more than a decade. In his new book Cheaper Faster Better, Steyer argues that the clean energy and climate technologies he's been financing for years are approaching a tipping point where they will dominate the global energy economy.
Despite growing indications of a climate crisis, Steyer is bullish on capitalism's power to "win the climate war," as his book's subtitle says.
"We're doing worse in terms of climate impact than people predicted," Steyer told Newsweek recently. "But our technological capability and economic capability to solve this is so much better than people understand—it's terrific."
Steyer is a New York native who settled in San Francisco, where he made his fortune with Farallon Capital, the hedge fund he founded in 1986. He left Farallon in 2012 to focus on clean energy as an investor, philanthropist and political player.
Steyer has been a major donor to climate causes and Democratic candidates, and in 2020 became a candidate himself. His presidential campaign ended after finishing third in the Democratic primary in South Carolina. In 2021, Steyer and friend and fellow asset manager Katie Hall co-founded Galvanize Climate Solutions, a climate-focused global investment firm.
In a wide-ranging interview, Steyer talked about the climate stakes in the coming election and why he wrote a book about how clean energy is on the cusp of tremendous growth. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Newsweek: Your argument in the new bookis that the clean economy is going to win out not just because it's clean, but because it offers the things that the title [Cheaper Faster Better] implies. Is that correct?
Steyer: I can go a little further than that, Jeff. It is winning out. If you look at where we are right now, it's not a question of if it's going to happen because it's cheaper, faster and better. It is absolutely happening, in the real world, right now.
If you look at last year, 2023, 86 percent of new electricity generation globally was renewable. And my point is, people aren't doing it to be nice. Everyone around the world is going to make self-interested decisions about what to buy, what kind of electricity to use, what kind of cars to drive, how to heat their houses. Every decision will be self-interested.
The products that are going to win are cheaper, faster and better, and that's what we're seeing. People don't understand that renewables are much cheaper than fossil fuels and that that advantage is growing dramatically every year.
If you look globally at where we're going in terms of cars, something that people seem very focused on, EV's are moving incredibly fast in terms of new car sales.
So, it's not that it's going to happen. It is happening right now.
However, the growth in clean energy does not yet seem to be displacing the dirty energy. It seems like we're just adding more to meet the global appetite for energy. What needs to happen for the emissions to really come down and for our atmosphere to not have as much CO2 in it?
We need to retire dirty energy plants. [Clean energy] is totally dominating the change in the system, but because the system as a whole is growing, we haven't retired nearly enough dirty energy plants.
In the United States and in a lot of the developed world, we are retiring dirty plants. But in India they're going to need five times as much electricity in 2050 as they have now.
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US heatwave tied to four Oregon deaths as temperature records are shattered
More than 146 million Americans under extreme heat alerts as dangerous weather fuels outbreak of new wildfires
A fierce heatwave has shattered temperature records across the US west and has been tied to at least four deaths in Oregon, with more heat on the way as dangerous weather fueled the outbreak of new wildfires.
Oregon faced triple-digit temperatures and saw several records toppled over the weekend, including in Salem, where on Sunday it hit 103F (39.4C), topping the 99F (37.2C) mark set in 1960. Authorities in Multnomah county – home to Portland, where temperatures broke daily records over the weekend – said they were investigating four suspected deaths tied to the heatwave.
More than 146 million Americans were under extreme heat alerts on Monday, as both sides of the country cooked. Excessive heat warnings, the National Weather Service’s (NWS) highest alert, stretch across the west, covering parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Areas on the east coast, including Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, were also under heat advisories.
Dozens of locations in the west and Pacific north-west tied or broke previous heat records in recent days. On Sunday, Las Vegas set an all-time record high of 120F (48.8C), while across the desert in Death Valley national park, temperatures reached 128F (53.3 C), breaking a daily heat record and coming just shy of its all-time high. The dangerous temperatures caused the death of a motorcyclist in the park.
Meanwhile, firefighters are battling a flurry of new blazes that sparked in the brutal temperatures over the weekend, with the sweltering conditions posing challenges for fire crews. There were 73 large active fires burning across the country on Monday, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, collectively covering close to half a million acres, and fire conditions are expected to continue through the week.
California, which was left covered in quick-to-burn grasses after a wet winter, saw an explosive week, and firefighters are battling 18 active blazes.
In Santa Barbara county, the Lake fire burned through dry grass, brush and timber over the weekend, prompting evacuations of some rural homes, including the Neverland ranch. The fire has grown to 20,320 acres and was at 8% containment Monday morning.
Further north, the Shelly fire, which erupted in California’s Marble Mountain Wilderness last Wednesday, continues to pose threats to “communities, private timberlands, cultural resources, and wilderness areas”, Cal Fire posted in an update Monday, as fire behavior became more extreme through the weekend.
“Yesterday, as well as today, we have experienced some problematic weather forecasts that leads to critical fire behavior,” John Chester, operations section chief with Cal Fire’s Siskiyou unit said. “We are expecting the same weather patterns and forecasts over the next few days.”
Fire conditions have also been intense in Utah, fueling rapid growth for several large fires.
The Silver King fire, which has roared across more than 10,823 acres – more than 4,500 acres in a single day – has exhibited extreme behavior and is 0% contained. Hundreds of homes are at risk from the fire, as state officials secured federal support Monday.
“A warming and drying trend will continue today with an excessive heat warning, as temperatures continue to increase above average the relativity humidity continues to drop to 10 – 15%,” officials with the US Forest Service said in a Monday morning update on the fire, adding that gusty winds will continue to fan the flames. “These elements combine for extreme fire weather.”
The heatwave came as the global temperature in June hit a record high for the 13th straight month and it marked the 12th straight month that the world was 1.5C (2.7F) warmer than pre-industrial times, the European climate service Copernicus said.
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Taking a train during a heat wave? Watch out for ‘sun kinks’
As tracks heat up, they expand and buckle. That's forcing rail operators to adapt as the climate warms
One of the iconic sensory experiences of riding a train is actually the sound of ingenuity. As steel railroad tracks heat up, they grow: 1,800 feet of rail expands by more than an inch for every 10 degrees Fahrenheit of temperature increase. So rails used to be laid down in sections — each between 30 and 60 feet long — with small gaps.
“The very specific railway noise that you hear — chuchat … chuchat … chuchat … chuchat … chuchat — is because there is a gap between the rails, and this gap is meant for such expansion,” said Dev Niyogi, who studies urban climate extremes at the University of Texas at Austin.
Still, in a severe heat wave, the rail can swell until the underlying ties can no longer contain it. Then the rail gets visibly wavy, morphing into what’s known as a sun kink. That’s a serious hazard for trains, which can derail on misaligned tracks. In extreme cases, the track can violently buckle, going from a straight shot to grotesque curves almost instantly. So if it’s excessively hot out, rail services will slow their trains as a precaution, which provides less of the mechanical energy that can lead to buckling. Amtrak, for instance, restricts speeds to 80 miles per hour if the rail temperature hits 140 degrees. That was partly the reason behind Amtrak delays in the Northeast Corridor, which runs between Washington D.C. and Boston, during a brutal heat wave last month. (Amtrak did not respond to multiple requests to comment for this story.)
As extreme heat waves get worse, more tracks will turn into sun kinks — disrupting commuter rail service that reduces carbon emissions and slows that warming. In 2019, a study estimated that the U.S. rail network could see additional delay costs totaling between $25 billion and $45 billion by the year 2100, in a scenario that assumed greenhouse gas emissions decline in the next 20 years.
Compared to a tree falling on top of a track and blocking traffic, or a switch breaking, heat is a much larger, harder problem for rail operators to deal with. “Heat waves tend to be regional, so the impacts can be huge,” said Jacob Helman, one of the author’s of that 2019 study and a senior climate consultant at Resilient Analytics, which provides infrastructure vulnerability assessments. “It can impact the entire Northeast Corridor over the course of five days.”
As climate change drives hotter and longer heat waves, companies are reevaluating their operations and adapting new technologies. Railroads already use remote sensors to determine the temperature of their rails, but are getting still more sophisticated as heat waves intensify. They’re using computer modeling, for example, to figure out how to make tracks more resistant to buckling, among many other steps. “The industry is implementing new ways to use advanced sensors, satellite imaging, and AI to constantly monitor track health and respond to any potential hazards,” said Scott Cummings, assistant vice president of research and innovation at MxV Rail, a subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads.
While those gaps in the rail reduce the problem of buckling, each wheel of a train rolling over each gap results in wear-and-tear both on the rail and the cars. In response, railroads have for decades been deploying “continuous welded rail,” or CWR — segments of track stretching a quarter mile or more. CWR is held firmly in place by concrete ties (the strips under the rails that used to be made of wood), themselves held in place with ballast stones poured in between them. “It’s all just so much more rigid,” said Daniel Pyke, a rail expert at Sensonic in the United Kingdom, which makes train safety tech. “You’ve got so much more mass there to keep everything in place.”
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