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Renewables are booming – REN21 Global Review

 As the new annual REN21 global review illustrates, renewables are booming
most places, supplying 28% of global electricity, with PV solar especially
lifting off fast, including, at last, in Australia and, crucially, Africa,
north and south. In all, there’s over 1TW of PV in place globally.

The scale and reach of some of the new projects planned is very dramatic. For
example, there is a proposal for a 20GW PV array in north Australia which
would send power to Singapore.

Meanwhile, wind also continues to boom,
offshore especially, with ever larger, taller devices, as well as floating
units. There are some huge projects planned. For example, up to 20GW of
offshore wind has been proposed by Denmark for islands off NE Europe,
including 10GW linked to an artificial ‘hydrogen island’ in the North
Sea, on its part of the Dogger Bank. Denmark also plans two other offshore
wind-based energy islands for the North Sea and Baltic Sea with the
potential for some hydrogen production.

Clearly hydrogen is becoming a
regularly featured energy vector, in part since it can be stored in a range
of ways and the cost of producing it by electrolysis using renewable power
is falling.

However, although, batteries still rule the roost, at least for
short-term storage, there are also other energy storage options, some of
which may offer advantages in the newly emerging flexible energy systems,
including heat stores of various types and some intriguing gravity-based
systems. Bew and updated studies of the long term global potential of
renewables are emerging.

Prof. Mark Jacobson and his team at Stanford
University have produced an updated set of 100% wind, water and solar
energy 2050 scenarios covering 145 countries. Because battery costs have
dropped dramatically and because four-hour batteries are now readily
available, it is now justifiable to include a larger penetration of
batteries than in the previous studies’. So less demand response and very
long term storage is needed, reducing costs.

 Renew Extra 6th Aug 2022

https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2022/08/global-renewables-review.html

August 6, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable