Solar PV and wind turbines are not the future of renewables, anymore they‘re the now. It‘s a much more complex and fascinating place, and it involves batteries, grid software, and a handful of obstinate engineering challenges that nobody‘s paying much attention to.
This piece dissects where renewable energy really is right now, what‘s on the verge of scaling, and where the truly real obstacles are whether you are a clean tech follower, a climate policy watcher, or just someone who would like a clearer view than the ‘solar is our savior!’ headlines.
Table of Contents
What is the current position?
Despite some variation in specific figures, the general contours of these energy outlooks tend to concur. A high renewables electricity share of between 50 85% or more is forecast across the decades through to 2050 in most scenarios on offer, with a pathway for almost 100% renewables in electricity, heat, transport and industry. Not an out-there projection. Baseline for much rigorous analysis.
Renewables are predicted to grow from just about 20% of the world‘s power production today to about 40-70% by 2050 under existing or more-than-adequate policy. The organizations providing the estimates here IEA, IRENA, BloombergNEF, DNV don‘t align very precisely on the percentage, but in all cases it‘s a robust future.
What‘s interesting to note is the chalk between desirable and trajectory. The UN International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) calculates that, by 2050, 90 percent of the world‘s electricity would be feasible to achieve from renewable sources and obligatory to get there, far higher than current policy pathways points. Between “from ” and ” will” describes the whole summary of the next 20 years.
What is already mature (and actually boring…in a good way)
Solar and onshore wind are no longer experimental. The utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind are now mature, mainstream technologies; costs are already falling quickly and deployment is accelerating rapidly, in both advanced economies and emerging economies. There are some more ambitious projections by 2050, solar and wind alone could be providing more than two thirds of all electricity demand.
I‘ve been using live grid monitoring dashboards from several European transmission operators as my main deep dive while researching grid integration pieces and what I keep coming back to is how banal high-renewables grids are becoming in practice. Operators have demonstrated that wind, solar, and other large volumes of renewables can be operated successfully without significant reliability issues so long as the proper resources and planning are available. This is perhaps a more subdued story than is being told, but it is the story that matters.
Hydropower: the old faithful. Still the dominant source of renewable electricity in several countries as well as a flexible high efficiency source of electricity generation through the use of reservoirs and pumped storage but limited changes to its share are more likely than a quick expansion as most of the best sites are built out and there are numerous limits.
Bioenergy is less and less timid. It does today matter in some national energy systems, but future scenarios are based on resource and land limitation, limiting its deployment and looking toward wind, solar and efficiency.
The part that is just beginning to grow all but a few have This has just begun to be established.
This is where the most common neglect is from technical articles the not-quite everywhere, past-the-pilot-stage technologies.
Offshore, and floating, wind. Offshore wind is taking off now, the older and newer floating platforms, and is projected to be a major driver for coastal regions with deep waters, higher wind speeds, and a good grid. Europe, China and North America are all likely to play key roles. Floating platforms accommodate turbines away from the coast in deep waters, reducing visual impacts and utilizing stronger, more consistent winds, but creating more complex grid interconnections and high mounting costs.
Grid-scale storage. This is the part that truly enables high-renewable grids to succeed. Lithium-ion battery systems are transitioning from trial runs to deep penetration, providing short-duration resource balancing for both solar and wind farms and starting to compete directly with gas peaker plants. My experience monitoring storage announcements over the past year revealed a distinct trend announcements that were formerly expressed in megawatts are now more commonly expressed in gigawatts.
Digital grids. This one isn‘t really touched on anywhere outside trade journals, but could be just as critical as the hardware. Sensors, analytics and intelligent controls are playing a key role in facilitating the energy transition improving forecasting, managing optimal grid operation and understanding demand response. If you are already thinking about home automation, the same framework applies from a single house to the entire grid covered in our Home Automation for Sustainability guide.
Electrify everything else. Electric vehicles, heat pumps and electrified industrial processes are also changing how much power generation capacity the grid has to provide. It is likely that the level of electricity demand will increase by 75% or more by 2050 – driven by electric vehicles, data centers and increased cooling needs.
2 mistakes most articles make about this subject:
Firstly, storage is not a singletechnology problem. It‘s a broad portfolio problem. People have talked excitedly of “battery breakthroughs” as if a single battery chemistry is going to solve everything. It won‘t rather several different means of storage batteries, pumped hydro, thermal, hydrogen, and so forth will be required across different timeframes and for different uses. Lithium-ion “beats” for hours-long balancing, but it is doesn‘t have the design for weeks-long seasonal deficits.
Second: the bottleneck no longer is nearly so much the generation as it is all the rest of that process. Permitting, interconnection, transmission, and policy design are becoming bigger limiting factors than panel and turbine manufacturing. We don‘t hear so much about this because no “interconnection queue delays” makes a catchy headline.
And what still remains truly difficult to unravel
Grid stability with variable generation. Solar and wind have unpredictable, fluctuating outputs unlike a gas plant. Solving this variation while maintaining grid stability and power quality is another key technical challenge the may include resolving issues such as frequency regulation, voltage control and inertia deficit as historical generators are decommissioned. Policymakers, utilities, and scientists are seen as working together to found solutions with forecasting, demand response and storage given as the top mitigation methods.
Costs of long-duration storage: Despite steep reductions in the cost of batteries, long-duration/seasonal storage carry higher costs. They are costly and technically a challenge to store long periods of low renewable generation.
Uncertainty about policy. Perhaps the scariest wildcard of them all. Without significant policy changes, projections point to overshoot of safe carbon budgets early in the 2040‘s, with warming trajectories reaching 2.5 2.6°C by 2100. The technology coefficient has largely been established. The policy coefficient is far from it.
Land use and siting friction. Scaling renewables to very high shares presents land-use and environmental issues competiveness with agriculture, ocean ecosystem impacts from offshore wind, sustainability of bioenergy feedstock-sourcing. None of these are unresolvable, but planning processes need to be accelerated and communities engaged more quickly.
Equity and access. Too little focus is given to this. The vast majority of the world’ s population about nine out of ten live in areas with polluted air, and transitioning to renewables can save millions of lives annually lost prematurely due to air pollution. Providing access to clean power is much more complicated for many lower-income countries, which often have roadblocks of finance, infrastructure, governance and technology.
Where the principles are going
A few research-stage concepts are worth keeping an eye on, even if they‘re not mainstream yet:
- 100% renewable roadmaps peer-reviewed research has charted pathways for more than 140 countries to get close to 100% renewables across electricity, transportation, buildings and industry by 2050, with extensive regional grid integration and a large role for storage.
- Green hydrogen many net zero designs rely on low-cost renewable electricity to produce that hydrogen to run ships, airplanes, or industry or for multi-day storage.
- Super grids linking renewable sources over huge areas, reduces storage requirements and alleviates the variations in generation, similar idea to what has been described in our wider Green Technology Guide.
My thoughts after having looked into this for a while
Renewable energy is no longer a question of “when” it hasn‘t been for some time. What is more intriguing is how quickly the infrastructure around the technology storage, grids, permitting, policy can keep pace with how quickly panel and turbine installations already are. While digging into this report I realized that nearly every measure of credible research was arriving at same result: the technology works it‘s the infrastructure that has fallen behind.
For those who are only loosely following clean energy adoption, the bottom line is this don‘t use deployment as an indicator of progress. Judge it with the deployment numbers of storage and announcements of grid modernization. That is where the actual bottleneck is happening now.
FAQs
Is 100% renewable energy really possible?
Peer-reviewed scenario studies for more than 140 countries find that, with strong policies and investments, the world could transition to nearly 100% renewable energy for all purposes around 2050.
How much renewable energy can we expect by 2050?
According to current policy bandwagons, by 2050 renewables could generate as much as 40% to 70% of electricity, with the higher end of the range only under an enhanced climate policy.
Is battery storage the only answer to renewable variability?
No. Storage is critical but not an isolated answer a blend of batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage and hydrogen is required, with each being suitable to different timeframes.
What is the biggest technical challenge at the moment?
Dealing with variability and intermittency, and maintaining grid stability, while deploying a range of storage technologies at a fast enough rate to match increased electrified demand.
Will renewables alone get us to our climate target?
Renewables are identified as the key solution but reports tend to put more emphasis on the need to combine renewables with efficiency, electrification and a change in behavior in order to find a way to 1.5–2°C.
What are the public health implications?
A switch to renewables has the potential to cut air pollution from burning fossil fuels, reducing millions of premature deaths each year especially in less affluent regions of the world.
Which skills are relevant for working in this space?
Power systems engineering, data science and AI for forecasting, energy policy, cybersecurity for digitalized grids are emerging industry segments in the wake of increasing renewable penetration.
But why do we need off-shore wind if on-shore is working?
Because it uses larger, more consistent wind available far off-shore and has nothing to do with land it isn‘t another supply but a distinct one.
Is policy really the biggest constraint now?
For most places, yes. The hardware curve has largely been solved. Building blocks are accepting, transmission buildout, and reliable long-term policy signals.
So, who should actually care about this?
Anyone working in technology, energy, policy, or even house automation and ecology those same predictions, automation, and optimization techniques distributed throughout a smart home are the foundation of how future utility will be operated.
I’m a technology writer with a passion for AI and digital marketing. I create engaging and useful content that bridges the gap between complex technology concepts and digital technologies. My writing makes the process easy and curious. and encourage participation I continue to research innovation and technology. Let’s connect and talk technology!
