A recent story by The New Yorker dove into the astonishing growth of solar energy over the past few years. Among other extensive data, the magazine notes that renewables made up 96 percent of demand for new energy throughout the globe in 2024; In the United States, 93 percent of new energy capacity came from solar and wind.
But while renewables writ large are having their day, the speed at which solar energy in particular is growing blows everything else out of the water.
For example, it’s now estimated that the world is now installing one gigawatt worth of solar energy infrastructure every 15 hours — or about the output of a new coal plant.
For some historical context, the New Yorker notes that it took 68 years since the invention of the first photovoltaic solar cell in 1954 to construct a single terawatt’s worth of solar power. It took just two years to hit the second terawatt in 2024, and the third is expected within mere months.
This explosive growth has been fueled by huge efficiency gains in solar energy output, breakthroughs in manufacturing, and streamlined installation processes. There’ve also been huge developments in panel recycling, meaning the darker side of solar energy — mineral extraction and panel fabrication — might one day be a thing of the past.
Yet, we use shitton more power than we used to even 5 years ago. Solars were believed to replace electricity generation methods based on fossils, not to add to equation eh
If fossil fuels were taxed heavily, it would likely be enough to replace existing fossil fuel power plants with solar. Unfortunately taxing fossil fuels enough at a state level to make that viable is nigh impossible.
That leaves us with the need to combine solar with degrowth from individuals on a mass scale for it to start eating away at existing fossil fuel power.
As it is now, It’s still better than if all the new generation had been fossil fuels, but it’s very much not enough.