The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Bloomberg
G’day indeed! By 2040, rooftop solar panels will supply about one-quarter of Australia’s electricity as declining costs and ample sunlight make photovoltaics the continent’s cheapest source of energy.
In Brazil, as much as 20 percent of the nation’s power will come from panels on residential rooftops, and Germany will get 15 percent from these small systems in 2040, according to New Energy Outlook 2017, a report released by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That compares to about 5 percent for the US and India.
Thanks to large utility-scale solar farms and commercial solar gardens, power derived from the sun is rapidly expanding as cost reductions continue to spur demand. The cost of energy from solar over the lifetime of the system, already just one-quarter of what it was in 2009, will drop an additional 66 percent by 2040. In four years, solar power will be cheaper than coal almost everywhere.
Because solar energy is produced only during daylight hours, homes with rooftop panels will increasingly come equipped with batteries to store excess supplies. Small-scale battery storage will outpace the growth of large utility systems over the next few years. Installed capacity of household and office systems will exceed those of large utility-scale storage in a decade, with investment reaching $16.9 billion over a five-year period from 2026 to 2030.
Solar and energy storage will help contribute to a global reduction in the burning of fossil fuels and emissions of carbon dioxide. Emissions of the greenhouse gas will peak in 2026, and be 4 percent lower in 2040 than in 2016, the report showed.