“100 per cent by 2030” sounds like a great slogan, seems pretty concrete and neatly ties with the claims we’re only years away from a civilisation-destroying ecological catastrophe unless we take action now. But what does 100 per cent of energy from renewables by 2030 actually mean in practice?
If the 1.5 annual growth rate in electricity consumption continues, by 2030 the annual electricity consumption worldwide will be 16,597.6 MTOE.
To generate one MTOE of electricity today requires a wind farm with an installed capacity of between 1,900 and 2,800 MW (depending on wind conditions), let’s say average of 2,350 MW, which amounts to around 1,175 wind turbines (most commercial wind turbines are around 2MW) spread over an area of between 260 and 360 square miles of land (let’s say an average of 310 square miles).To generate the same 1 MTOE of electricity from solar requires a PV power plant with an installed capacity of between 3,300 and 5,400 MW (depending on sunlight conditions), let’s say average of 4,350 MW, occupying between 45 and 75 square miles (let’s say an average of 60 square miles).There are 4,104 days left until the end of 2030.Hence, to achieve the new renewables electricity production capacity of 14,710.3 mtoe by 2030, every day from today till 31 December 2030 we need to add to the world generating capacity:A new wind farm with 4,212 wind turbines, covering the area of 1,111 square miles, or A new PV power plant covering 215 square milesThat’s, I repeat, every day.So – this translates to 17.3 million new wind turbines, covering the area of 4,560,193 square miles. That’s a bit less than the land area of the United States and India combined. Or a solar farm covering the land area of 882,618 square miles, or slightly less than the equivalent of Alaska and Texas. To make us 100 per cent renewable by 2030.(Forget for a moment that wind and solar provide intermittent power and no technology exists today to enable us to store all the electricity thus generated so it could provide the base power.)
