By Nathaniel Bullard
Over the holiday I spent as much time outside as possible, and as little time in front of screens as I could. As I start up 2022 screen time, there are a few announcements of note in the world of transport and electricity that get me thinking about the year (and years) ahead. They range wide, but point to two things: a massive scaling up of clean electricity and electrified transport, and a concurrent decentralization of both at the same time. The implications of the latter are fascinating, but first, the scaling.
In India, solar generation narrowly surpassed wind generation in 2021, making it the third-biggest source of electrons behind coal and hydro. Wind, solar, and biomass are now more than 10% of India’s power generation; throw in hydro and nuclear and 25% of its power is zero-carbon. Coal still dominates — it was 72% of all generation and at a record high-level last year — but it’s expected to barely grow to 2030, while solar will triple.
India’s solar expansion will continue, and so will the world’s. Much of that will be highly distributed, at the scale of a household, and much of it will be paired with a battery. BNEF expects small-scale photovoltaic generation capacity to expand almost ten-fold by 2050. Battery capacity will expand nearly 130 times by mid-century.
Batteries, of course, will not just be stationary and used for power grid applications. In the U.S., Ford has announced the second doubling of production capacity for its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck in less than twelve months, from 40,000 to 80,000 and now 150,000 units a year. A Ford executive said that “it feels like the demand is certainly there” for EVs to be 10% of the U.S. car market, which would align this lagging market with the global market, which hit that mark in the third quarter of 2021.
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