Solar panels and wind turbines are today’s answer to the Model T Published 9 months ago By SuperAdmin This year’s roadmap finds no immediate progress on emissions, but it does offer a “brighter note.” As the authors state in their introduction, “The path to 1.5 degrees C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open.” Last month the International Energy Agency published its second Net Zero Roadmap report, which describes a way for the global economy to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The first edition of the report, in 2021, was a departure for an organization known more for its detailed data than its normative view of the future. This year’s roadmap finds no immediate progress on emissions, but it does offer a “brighter note.” As the authors state in their introduction, “The path to 1.5 degrees C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open.”Behind that growth, or perhaps within it, is the expansion of what the IEA calls “mass manufactured technologies”: solar photovoltaics, electric cars, residential heat pumps and stationary battery storage. These products benefit from “standardization and short lead times,” which means they can be produced by the millions or hundreds of millions, and manufacturers can roll out new and improved versions at a rapid clip.For instance, between 2015 (when the Paris Agreement was signed) and 2022, solar PV added as much capacity as all of Europe’s installed power generation, and heat pump sales increased to a level “approximately equivalent to the entire residential heating capacity in Russia.” These milestones are impressive, but even for those steeped in energy data, they are also a bit airless, without reference to something outside energy itself. We know that mass-manufactured clean energy technologies are growing fast – but how does that compare to other sectors and other periods of time? This year, the IEA provides some useful analogies, setting EV batteries,solar modules and wind turbines against three innovative technologies of the past: US aircraft produced during the Second World War, the Ford Model T from 1910 to 1920 and gas turbine generators from 1970 to 1980. The report compares these groups based on two factors: the average annual increase in deployment for each technology during its key decade, and how much annual costs declined during that same decade. The result is complex
