CleanTechnica readers are very well aware that most solar and EV market research forecasts are utter shite. Most of us are horrible fortune tellers, and market research firms covering disruptive technologies don’t seem to have much of an advantage there. Many of you are also well aware that most of the news about technology breakthroughs is hype, at best, and deceptive evil, at worst. Actually, I think that my understanding of these two points has been greatly augmented by many of our readers. So, with those acknowledgements out of the way, below is an article reposted from Sustainnovate that I think you will like. Hope you do!
We see a lot of high-flying ideas about futuristic technology. Maybe we see too much, because most of us have a very hard time realizing when a transformative technology is really going to overtake a dated one. Closely following the solar, wind, and energy storage industries for the past several years, I’m convinced that these technologies are going to quickly replace fossil fuels and nuclear energy. However, even many experts in these industries don’t see truly disruptive growth for decades. They see huge growth, but not disruptive growth. I think many of them will be surprised.
What actually stimulated this article was an excellent introductory paragraph in a Washington Post article. It reads: “In the 1980s, leading consultants were skeptical about cellular phones. McKinsey & Company noted that the handsets were heavy, batteries didn’t last long, coverage was patchy, and the cost per minute was exorbitant. It predicted that in 20 years the total market size would be about 900,000 units, and advised AT&T to pull out. McKinsey was wrong, of course. There were more than 100 million cellular phones in use 2000; there are billions now. Costs have fallen so far that even the poor — all over world — can afford a cellular phone.”
The cell phone revolution is one of the latest such stories, but this has happened repeatedly. We dropped typewriters when we got computers. We dropped cassette tapes when CDs came along. We dropped those old, bulky TVs when flat-screen TVs got competitive. We dropped film-based cameras when digital cameras came along.
But the solar power, wind power, and energy storage revolution isn’t simply about some consumer products. It is about the lifeline of civilization, energy. Such a transition isn’t just a swap either. It means going from an energy system centered around extremely wealthy semi-monopolies to a system of distributed power systems owned by a lot more people. I think precisely the fact that this transition is so structurally influential is one reason forecasters, as well as most of the rest of us, have a hard time predicting a quick takeover of the energy market.
Coming back to the Washington Post article, author Vivek Wadhwa writes: “The experts are saying the same about solar energy now. They note that after decades of development, solar power hardly supplies 1 percent of the world’s energy needs. They say that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies. They too are wrong. Solar will be as ubiquitous as cellular phones are.”
I agree, but it’s not just about solar. It’s battery storage, electric cars, and wind turbines sprinkled in between.
But I do agree that solar power is central to it all, and even as Shell has projected, I think it will be the dominant energy source in the world by century’s end, or even much sooner. To close out, here’s one more paragraph from the Washington Post article: “Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years — as costs have been dropping. He says solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But, by Kurzweil’s estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.”
Source: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/23/us-horrible-fortune-tellers/
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