Feasibility of Germany’s newly proposed RES targets
The new German government aims to strengthen their RES targets to supply 80% of electricity by 2030. How challenging are they? What level of efforts is required to achieve them? I apply growth models and compare with other leading countries in developing renewables to discuss the feasibility of Germany achieving these targets.
Can we predict the future growth of renewables based on past trends?
The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook refreshes sophisticated scenarios that project the future growth of solar PV. Here, I investigate if we can match their predictions by fitting an S-curve to historical growth data.
Global growth of wind needs to be double as fast as recent growth in Germany to meet IEA’s Net Zero by 2050
The IEA Net Zero 2050 Roadmap envisions adding 310 GW of onshore wind in 2030. This is the same as was added globally in the last five years. Has such a rate been ever achieved in any country?
Renewables targeted before Fukushima
In a recent letter to Nature we argue that Japan had become a world's leader in solar energy long before Fukushima. This is both good and bad news for low-carbon energy transitions. On the one hand, there is no need to wait for a nuclear disaster to develop renewable electricity. On the other hand, solar and wind energy will not magically emerge after an earthquake and a tsunami strike a nuclear power plant.