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More Lithium batteries required?


When it comes to power, solar could leave nuclear and everything else in the shade

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton might have been hoping for an endorsement from economists for his plan to take Australian nuclear.He shouldn't expect one from The Economist.The Economist is a British weekly news magazine that has reported on economic thinking and served as a place for economists to exchange views since 1843.By chance, just three days after Dutton announced plans for seven nuclear reactors he said would usher in a new era of economic prosperity for Australia, The Economist produced a special issue, titled Dawn of the Solar Age.The June 22 special solar edition of The Economist.(Supplied: The Economist)Whereas nuclear power is barely growing, and is shrinking as a proportion of global power output, The Economist reported solar power was growing so quickly it was set to become the biggest source of electricity on the planet by the mid-2030s.By the 2040s — within this next generation — it could be the world's largest source of energy of any kind, overtaking fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Solar's off-the-charts global growthInstalled solar capacity is doubling every three years, meaning it has grown tenfold in the past 10 years. The Economist says 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.To give an idea of the standing start the industry has grown from, The Economist reports that in 2004 it took the world an entire year to install 1 gigawatt of solar capacity (about enough to power a small city). This year, that's expected to happen every day.Energy experts didn't see it coming. The Economist includes a chart showing that every single forecast the International Energy Agency has made for the growth of solar since 2009 has been wrong. What the agency said would take 20 years happened in only six.The forecasts closest to the mark were made by Greenpeace — "environmentalists poo-pooed for zealotry and economic illiteracy" — but even those forecasts turned out to be woefully short of what actually happened.