‘Insanely cheap energy’: how solar power continues to shock the world
Australian smarts and Chinese industrial might made solar power
the cheapest power humanity has seen – and no one saw it coming
‘Solar is providing the cheapest energy the world has ever seen ... It’s a fundamentally different world we’re moving into.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Royce Kurmelovs | @RoyceRk2 | Sat 24 Apr 2021 16.00 | EDT
In the year 2000, the International Energy Agency made a prediction that would come back to haunt it: by 2020, the world would have installed a grand total of 18 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar capacity. Seven years later, the forecast would be proven spectacularly wrong when roughly 18 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in a single year alone.
Ever since the agency was founded in 1974 to measure the world’s energy systems and anticipate changes, the yearly World Energy Outlook has been a must-read document for policymakers the world over.
Over the last two decades, however, the IEA has consistently failed to see the massive growth in renewable energy coming. Not only has the organisation underestimated the take-up of solar and wind, but it has massively overstated the demand for coal and oil.