Solar’s First Trillion Watts Arrives During a Wartime Energy Transition – EQ Mag Pro

The energy transition has become a weapon.

That’s one consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If war is a force that gives us meaning, this one is redefining the global energy system. What had until recently been Europe’s decades-long pursuit of a green agenda to replace coal and natural gas with wind turbines and batteries has become a matter of wartime urgency. Leaders in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and Warsaw woke up to a new reality in which spending up to $1 billion per day on Russian fossil fuels meant financing the missiles exploding in Kyiv. So the transition accelerates.

Efforts to fight climate change often adopt the language of war. It’s aspirational, in a dark way. Scientific warnings and extreme weather haven’t yet spurred the global economy to fully mobilize against greenhouse gas. So those who want more urgency resort to combat metaphors. Now an actual war might turn, in part, on curbing or even embargoing one of the biggest sources of fossil fuels.

Clean energy isn’t waiting for a geopolitical shift. The world stands on the verge of installing its one-thousandth gigawatt of solar electricity. The road to that milestone — the first solar terawatt — started with the invention of primitive panels in the 1950s. The second terawatt will come in less than four years, according to BloombergNEF. It’s possible that India, with a new net-zero goal, will play a China-size role in the next stage.

The growing markets for renewables haven’t escaped the inequities that shape the fossil economy. Microfinance businesses bringing solar rigs to rural Africa end up turning off the lights on villagers and refugees when the payments stop, and mircogrids already built in Indonesia are shutting off for lack of funding. The planet’s cheapest energy source is, somehow, still unaffordable for those who need it most.

Source: Bloomberg