Thomas Carlyle was a 19th century Scottish historian, lecturer, mathematician, and philosopher. He may have had social ideas we disapprove of nowadays, but he did say one great truth. We’ll share this in a moment as wind and solar achieve a critical milestone while demand surges.
Thomas Carlyle’s One Great Truth He Shared
Thomas Carlyle said “When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze”. Someday we hope that will universally true for renewable forestry, but we’ll hold that thought for another day.
We are thinking here of how wind and solar power previously failed to get decent traction because of skeptics and powerful lobbies. Yet all the time visionaries were going about their task of planting seeds that bore the words “of course we can”.
Therefore we were delighted to receive our virtual copy of EMBER’s Global Electricity Review 2022. This disclosed the fantastic news that wind and solar generated 10% of global electricity for the first time in 2021. See the link at the end of this post for the full report behind this short video.
How Wind and Solar Achieved Their Critical Milestone
EMBER confirms “solar and wind and other clean sources generated 38% of the world’s electricity in 2021”. This was more than all the coal power stations in the world together, despite a 5% coal increase in response to growing demand.
But during the same period solar expanded 23%, and wind 14%. Both became “the lowest cost source of electricity on a levelized basis” according to EMBER. However, wind and solar must achieve this and greater milestones through to 2030, to keep global warming to 1.6 degrees.
Those acorns are sprouting all over the world. Vietnam increased its solar capacity 337% in 2021. While EMBER reports “Governments like US, Germany, UK and Canada are so confident in clean electricity, that they are planning to shift their grids to 100% clean electricity within the next decade and a half”.
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Preview Image: Wind and Solar in 2021
