National growth dynamics of wind and solar power compared to the growth required for global climate targets

Aleh Cherp, Vadim Vinichenko, Jale Tosun, Joel A. Gordon, Jessica Jewell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Climate mitigation scenarios envision considerable growth of wind and solar power, but scholars disagree on how this growth compares with historical trends. Here we fit growth models to wind and solar trajectories to identify countries in which growth has already stabilized after the initial acceleration. National growth has followed S-curves to reach maximum annual rates of 0.8% (interquartile range of 0.6–1.1%) of the total electricity supply for onshore wind and 0.6% (0.4–0.9%) for solar. In comparison, one-half of 1.5 °C-compatible scenarios envision global growth of wind power above 1.3% and of solar power above 1.4%, while one-quarter of these scenarios envision global growth of solar above 3.3% per year. Replicating or exceeding the fastest national growth globally may be challenging because, so far, countries that introduced wind and solar power later have not achieved higher maximum growth rates, despite their generally speedier progression through the technology adoption cycle.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)742-754
Number of pages13
JournalNature Energy
Volume6
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2021

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