Comment by Torkel
4 days ago
The growth of solar is astounding. I dug into data a while back and tried to do some visualizations of it, mainly for my own understanding:
https://torkeldanielsson.se/solar-energy-forecasts/
Solar is already by far our cheapest source of energy. As solar expands, the learning rate means solar will be even cheaper. We should expect solar to be the single largest source of energy on earth by 2035.
A shame electricity is not the whole picture when it comes to energy. The resurgence in EV sales off the back of high gas prices is awesome, but almost 100% of bulk transport costs still rely on oil. Also, unlike EV's which can be plugged in at home for most of their needs, bulk-transport will require considerable new infrastructure to make the transition. Still a way to go.
Something like half of all bulk transport is moving fossil fuels around. So there’s already a huge win
It's a couple of months since I did the calculations, but I do believe 2035 is for all energy, not just electricity.
It's easy to drag out a flat line in an exponential graph - but the line better start bending soon or we'll end up with a truly mind boggling amount of solar energy.
There was this launched some time ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-02/incat-launches-worlds...
It'd an electric ship, which has what is basically a grid scale battery power plant on board to power it.
The problem is range. Good enough for it's intended use as a ferry in South America. But it's going to need to be towed there from Tasmania.
There was a global agreement to shift ocean transport from oil.
The US killed it.
The US and Israel attacked Iran causing chaos in oil markets and put it back on track.
https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-...