Manoj Pandey*
The sun is undoubtedly an enormous source of energy, and it stands to logic that if the solar energy is properly tapped, it should serve all energy needs of the human civilization. But the reality is that only about 10% of global energy needs are met from solar energy.
Let us look at the irony in short arguments so that at the end we see the total picture: a picture that throws some light on the dark side of the use of sunlight.
Sunlight falling on the earth is enormous.
You read that right. The total amount of energy that the earth gets from the sun is enormous.
One-third of the light falling on the earth is radiated back to space, and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere, oceans and land. The light that is absorbed by the earth in one hour is more than what the world uses in one year. If that is not enough to fascinate you, look at this: the amount of solar energy that the earth absorbs in one year is twice that of what can be obtained from all the coal, oil, gas and uranium reserves that the earth has.
Wind energy, which is to a large extent an outcome of difference in solar energy falling in different regions, is another high-potential renewable energy source. Together, these two sources – solar and wind – can supply power a hundred times of what is consumed today, even with today’s technologies (which are constantly improving).
In numerical terms, compare the current global energy consumption (around 70 Petawatt Hour) with what can be produced with solar panels alone (5800 PWh), leave aside other solar technologies.
Carbon Tracker, an independent think tank, has estimated the solar energy potential of different countries and regions, and has come to the conclusion that enough sunlight falls on most parts of the globe to become a formidable source of energy. Look at the overall scenario:
- There are only a few countries (Japan, Korea, some European countries) that have low solar energy potential due to low availability of land and/or climatic factors. Yet, in some of them, power up to ten times of their total energy demand can be generated from sunlight.
- A good number of countries have solar potential at least ten times their energy demand. These include, the USA, India and China.
- Some other countries (e.g. Australia, Chile and Morocco) have solar potential at least a hundred times their energy demand.
- Sub-Saharan Africa has solar potential that is in the range of a thousand times that of their energy requirements.
And we do not need much area for harnessing solar energy.
It flows from the above facts that we do not need to cover all our land and oceans for harnessing solar energy for our present energy needs.
It is estimated that solar panels covering just 0.3% of the land surface of the earth (leave aside oceans, which cover three-fourths of the earth surface) would be able to provide all the energy that humans require at today’s levels. That area is less than the combined area of Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
It is true that land is getting scarce due to human pressure. But solar energy extraction does not always need vast vacant areas. Rooftops are among the most plentiful surfaces that can be used to harness solar energy.
And technically it is very much possible to meet all energy demands from sunlight
Experts have made comprehensive energy models that account for factors such as less availability of sunlight in high latitudes, difficulty in setting up solar power structures on slopes and flood-prone areas, difficulty in setting up infrastructure in inaccessible areas, seasonality, excursion of cropped land, and so on. Even after discounting all that, and population pressure in densely populated countries such as India, they have found that technically about 5000 PWh of solar power can be generated in a year, which is much more than the total energy demand.
Scientists are experimenting with new materials for making solar panels. For example, perovskite is looking more promising than silicon – which is used for coating solar panels – in terms of both cost and efficiency.
A number of innovations have taken place in the last one decade or so that have made solar energy systems – particularly photovoltaic-based systems – more efficient. For example, new solar panel systems can rotate according to sun’s movement in the sky, they are also less heating prone now. Huge storage capacities are being built/ experimented upon. Grids are being retro-fitted to cater to solar energy. One keeps seeing news reports how small and big innovations are being made to make the best use of solar energy in agriculture and agri-based industries, and many other industries, replacing traditionally produced electricity.
And solar power is increasingly becoming economically viable.
Over the years, the cost of solar energy has been falling rather fast, partly due to new technological developments and partly due to mass production of components.
In fact, in most countries, the cost of solar electricity has become lesser than that produced from fossil fuels. The cost will likely remain high in countries with small land masses (e.g. Japan) and/or low sunlight due to climatic conditions (many European countries), but overall it will keep getting even less costly in the days to come.
Look at the attached chart. It shows the situation as of 2020. Some countries with abundant sunlight and land area have a higher cost of solar energy production, mainly due to unfavourable policies due to abundant availability of fossil fuels. India too has achieved the barrier of cost of solar electricity vis-à-vis electricity produced from fossil fuels.
There has been some increase in the cost of photovoltaic cells in recent years, but such increases are likely to be absorbed due to countering factors such as government subsidies, lower costs of other components, etc, discovery of more efficient technologies and materials.
It has also been projected that as much as 90% of technical potential of solar electricity generation will become economically viable by 2025 and 100% by 2030.
According to one energy model, which tracks the progress of adoption of renewable energies, solar and wind will likely contribute significantly in the energy mix in the coming years.
In some cases, such as in rural households, street lighting and agriculture, solar energy has an inherent advantage over traditional power carried from power plants: that it has minimal or no transportation cost.
Thus, it stands to reason that the world should adopt solar energy in a big way.
And many countries have been promoting solar energy in a big way.
The realities of climate change and fast depleting fossil fuel reserves have shaken the world out of comfort in the use of biofuels. For reasons I will discuss later, there has not been much progress so far; yet, countries have been promoting renewable energy, and solar energy happens to be among the front-runners.
Many countries now give policy support to promote adoption of solar energy – especially solar electricity – in homes, offices, marketplaces, cities, industries and transportation. It comes mostly in the form of incentives for production, tax reliefs on import of materials, and subsidies to end users.
There are about 40 countries that now produce more than one Gigawatt of energy per year using photovoltaic technologies, led by China. The United States and India follow China in adoption of solar energy. In the last couple of years, some countries (e.g. Vietnam) have been promoting solar energy in a big way. As a result, solar electricity has now become a fairly big contributor to total electricity consumption in a few countries (e.g. Honduras [13%] and Australia [11%] as against global average [4%], as of 2020).
Yet, most of the usable solar energy goes untapped.
It looks ironical that adoption of solar power is much less than what it should have been despite reducing production costs, costs and dependence associated with fossil fuels, and environmental concerns.
Probe a bit deeper and this does not look that ironical.
Industry is not interested unless it sees big gains in adopting solar. It is no-brainer that the huge and very muscular fossil fuel industry does not want competing new energies to get cheaper and more easily available. Industries that use fossil fuels do not want to invest in renewables, considering short-term impact to their profitability. Some industries would need re-engineering their existing production lines, which they do not want to do.
Among individuals, families and condominiums, adoption of solar panels is low for many reasons. First, remove from the potential clientele the poor and those without the rights to use the roof. Hesitancy in installing solar panels arises from many factors, which include high costs and lack of servicing infrastructure in many locations, no clear-cut incentives, mismatch of technologies (for example, if a household can produce more power than its requirement, it cannot easily sell the surplus to the grid or keep storing it for long durations).
In many regions, weather makes solar panels undependable, and that is a big disincentive for their usage.
A 2018 study in Finland showed that people were open to adoption of solar panel technology despite climatic disadvantage in that country. It was seen that once there are some success stories, the social acceptance for solar panelling grows on its own.
A 2019 survey in Australia suggests that if economic costs come down, adoption of solar power is likely to accelerate. The survey found that the most important reason for non-adoption was high initial cost, followed by not being the house owner, and other property related limitations. Less than ten percent of the people surveyed had reservations relating to technology, lack of information or inertia.
Some other publicly available studies on social acceptance of solar panels show people’s acceptance for this technology, if it is promoted and incentivized by governments. But is no keenness to adopt it is seen even with incentives and promotions.
Supply-demand mismatch has led to overproduction of solar panels in the last decade or so, resulting in heavy losses to pioneers and consequently hesitation in investing in solar systems. Financial institutions had also become wary of financing solar projects. However, this hesitation is dwindling of late in countries where governments are seen supporting solar energy.
Even if solar power becomes cheaper than that generated from fossil fuel in poor countries, these countries are not in a position to invest even the minimum sums that will be needed to reach that stage of cheaper production.
One big bottleneck is difficulty in integration of dispersed solar systems (as against solar farms) with the power grid.
All grids are also not in a position to cater to large-scale day-night variations in production of energies due to the very nature of solar power production. Some analysts have emphasized that unless large-scale storage systems are evolved and put in place locally, energy produced by solar systems that cannot be directly integrated with the grid cannot be harnessed to its potential.
There also are constraints of components other than solar cells, and unless a recycling system is developed, some raw materials are likely to fall short of requirement or become costlier due to control by a few nations/ companies.
Lack of universal standards for setting up photovoltaic units (material standards, construction standards, etc) and lack of motivation among builders and town-lanners is supposed to one important factor limiting faster adoption of solar systems in existing and new buildings. Due to such reasons, and also concerns relating to durability, safety, repair and maintenance, adoption of solar panels remains low.
The biggest challenges are not technological or even economic… these relate to policy
The biggest challenges in harnessing solar energy relate to policy. these include how governments in power and different sets of users perceive the consequences of adoption of solar energy. (That applies to other renewable energies as well.)
National governments are influenced by how much has been invested in traditional (fossil-fuel based) technologies and industries. Some governments and legislatures also come under the influence of fossil-fuel lobbies.
As I am finishing this article, there are a series of reports in papers that auto-rickshaw unions in India have raised concerns on large-scale production of electricity-powered auto-rickshaws (which will be cheaper to run due to subsidies, etc).
Even if we consider genuine social and national interests, as against selfish interests of corporates, lobbies and individuals, there are major policy challenges. It is sensible to let an old thermal power plant die and make a corresponding investment in solar (or other renewable) energy, but how can running plants with a long remaining life be scrapped? What happens to the entire ecosystem of electricity generation-supply-trade-grid-employment-ancillary industries? Even rich nations such as the USA are not in a position to fund a quick replacement of fossil fuel-based systems.
As discussed earlier, grid-re-engineering to accommodate large-scale solar energy production is also going to be an uphill task for most nations, especially those with a large network.
The challenges mentioned above – and more at local levels – add up and do not allow solar power to be as popular as it should be if the ‘net zero emission’ goal is to be met by 2050.
If you are not update on this, let me inform that it has been globally agreed that the world must achieve a stage by 2050 in which the amount of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere is reduced to a bare minimum and is further offset by an equal amount sucked from the atmosphere. If that is not achieved, the world would not be able to limit the global temperature rise to 1.50C above the pre-industrial level – and that would lead to catastrophic climate changes.
Now comes the icing on the cake: one of the biggest reasons for slow adoption of solar power seems to be the comparative abundance of solar potential in poor countries, coupled with the control of fossil fuels resources and market by the rich. Had it been the opposite, the rich countries would have been spending large sums in technology and mass production of components for many decades (as is currently being done by China), leading to its much larger adoption by now.
Solar is not “all rose, no thorn”
Though solar energy is one of the cleanest energies, it is not without environmental costs.
When we consider all the materials and processes in the production of solar energy, we come across many points where pollution is caused. Production of equipment, especially solar panels, itself can be polluting in different ways. Some materials used in photovoltaic panels are harmful and polluting.
The need for a robust recycling system for solar panels cannot be over-emphasized. When large areas are covered with solar panels, a large number of them will keep reaching end-of-life and many would be voluntarily replaced earlier when new, more efficient and cheaper alternatives would become available. Unless the old ones are effectively recycled, they will turn into millions of tonnes of garbage a year and pose an enormous disposal problem. By one estimate, discarded solar panels will outweigh new panels by over two-and-a-half times by 2035, and the world is not at all prepared to handle that much ‘solar waste’.
Beyond overall impact on environment, which might indeed be minor in comparison to the great likely gains, there is a weird apprehension: it is like what happens when you find that a poor, unprotected, man has suddenly found a treasure, and the rich and powerful have lost their family gems. Once fossil fuels lose charm and are shunned due to environmental reasons – and solar energy rules the world, there are chances that the poor countries would turn rich. But there is a greater chance of new geopolitical alignments and colonialism for controlling lands with ‘super abundant’ solar radiation.
Further reading
- Adoption of solar power – why or why not?
- Public Readiness to Adopt Solar Energy—Responses of Some Finnish Individuals
- Solar and wind can meet world energy demand 100 times over
- Solar energy
- Solar Futures Study
- Solar power by country
- Solar PV
- Some Finnish Citizens
- The Dark Side of Solar Power
- The Sky’s the Limit: Solar and wind energy potential is 100 times as much as global energy demand
- Tracking Renewable Power 2020
- What are the barriers to solar energy adoption?
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*Manoj Pandey is a former civil servant. He does not like to call himself a rationalist, but insists on scrutiny of apparent myths as well as what are supposed to be immutable scientific facts. He maintains a personal blog, Th_ink
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the author and do not reflect the views of raagdelhi.com which does not assume any responsibility for the same.
