I’ll be presenting a talk at the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society conference. Title Irresistible Force* meets Immovable Object**
* Massive expansion in production of low-cost solar PV
** Entrenched resistance to deployment.
Shorter JQ: Irresistible force will win in the end
Presentation is here
John Quiggin 
Dammit, 316.9 GW.
Oops again, 216.9 was right in the first place. Note to puzzled readers: this is about a long comment with multiple links stuck in moderation, I haven’t (entirely) lost my mind.
James’ comment
While I’m waiting for the security Smaug to unlock the pearls of wisdom, a striking update from China: solar PV grew there by 216.9 GW in 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-26/china-added-more-solar-panels-in-2023-than-us-did-in-its-entire-history . Context in a detailed take on China from Lauri Myllyvirta, using a broad definition of “clean energy” sectors, including electric road vehicles and trains: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-clean-energy-was-top-driver-of-chinas-economic-growth-in-2023/ “ Clean-energy investment rose 40% year-on-year to 6.3tn yuan ($890bn), with the growth accounting for all of the investment growth across the Chinese economy in 2023. China’s $890bn investment in clean-energy sectors is almost as large as total global investments in fossil fuel supply in 2023 – and similar to the GDP of Switzerland or Turkey. Including the value of production, clean-energy sectors contributed 11.4tn yuan ($1.6tn) to the Chinese economy in 2023, up 30% year-on-year. Clean-energy sectors, as a result, were the largest driver of China’ economic growth overall, accounting for 40% of the expansion of GDP in 2023. Without the growth from clean-energy sectors, China’s GDP would have missed the government’s growth target of “around 5%”, rising by only 3.0% instead of 5.2%.” Since the real estate crisis continues, TINA to the clean energy policy in 2024. Curiously, building efficiency through heat pumps and insulation has missed out on the boom – for now. Re the “immovable object”. The political economy of this major shift in China is surely significant. Myllyvirta again: “The major role that clean energy played in boosting growth in 2023 means the industry is now a key part of China’s wider economic and industrial development. This is likely to bolster China’s climate and energy policies – as well as its “dual carbon” targets for 2030 and 2060 – by enhancing the economic and political relevance of the sector.” This understates matters. As recently as two years ago, the Chinese leadership used the old Gosplan playbook to drive the recovery from the pandemic – coal, steel, cement, construction. With the real estate sector in deep crisis, these sectors sputtered in 2023. The unstated compact with the Chinese people that keeps the CCP oligarchy in power – its “Mandate from Earth” to coin a phrase – is “you give us steady growth in living standards, we won’t demand democracy”. The compact was only kept in 2023 thanks to clean energy, and everybody knows it. The next time the coal barons ask for favours to protect their profits from green competition, they are much less likely to get them. China’s aggressive external economic diplomacy, in Africa, Latin America and the BRI neighbourhood, is likely to shift from promoting fossil fuels and infrastructure to electric grids and vehicles, rail, mass solarization to mop up the 300 GW/yr growth in Chinese PV production capacity, and so on. Two small cherries on the good news cake: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/01/26/aeg-launches-23-3-efficient-abc-solar-panel-with-40-year-warranty/ These are pretty standard premium panels with glass on both sides, sealed into an aluminium frame, nothing rivals can’t emulate. Expect more long warranties. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/02/02/vitamin-c-treatment-improves-stability-of-inverted-organic-solar-cells/ I wouldn’t rush out to buy Danish Vitamin C futures if I were you.
any word on the possibility of using the shade of solar panels to protect low light plants being grown on a commercial scale?
also, channeling condensation moisture from the structures into the ground near the root zone?
just a thought.
Very minor niggle on slide 20. “Bifacial panels placed vertically with east-west orientation”·. This is ambiguous. The fences run N/S, so no land is shaded all day.
One intriguing benefit of agrivoltaics is that well-designed installations with suitable crops, as with Total’s careful trials in France, do not reduce crop yields at all. The better moisture retention outweighs the loss from shading. This means that the marginal economic land cost is nil even in densely populated regions, though landowners can presumably extract rents from the general scarcity of land. Where the landowners are peasant proprietors as in France, they also benefit from a more diverse income, as solar output is not correlated with most causes of crop failures
Hope is alive!!
I heart this website.
The irresistible force is climate change. It will prevail in the end and indeed that end is quite soon. The mistake is one of looking only in the economy and forgetting or blinding oneself to the trends in the real natural systems. The physical economy is a real sub-system in thermodynamic disequilibrium with the real earth system. This has all been said before of course and I am completely derivative in saying it.
Our current global problem is that the hegemonic neoliberal capitalist power system, of national and global order, will not permit the radical and very extensive policy programs which would address our fundamental problems. The current financial and physical circuits of the economy are the elite’s top priorities and will be ruthlessly and inflexibly maintained as long as possible. The physical circuits and systems of the natural world will continue to receive only token attention.
The current form of the economy will be maintained until a comprehensive rolling collapse begins. Token efforts to address problems will increase but will still be too little, too late. Eventually, the collapse will become catastrophic and undeniable.
The only interesting theory is what should we do when the catastrophic collapse commences after the final, clear and undeniable inflexion point? That is to say when just about everyone, except the completely crazy and the insanely rich, understand they are doomed in the short term without the most radical changes nation-wide and planet-wide.
Certainly, having as much renewable and sustainable energy in place as possible at the time of the collapse/physical de-growth inflexion point will help. This will be true IFF all or most of that the energy structure is truly sustainable, especially under early collapse/de-growth conditions. Comprehensive new models and programs, physical and societal, need to be theorized in the attempt to figure out what might work under the collapse/de-growth conditions we will inevitably face.
Anonymous: You might find this Portuguese study interesting on shading. SFIK it’s pretty representative in finding that agrivoltaics pays off economically. A pity that the authors don’t mention biodiversify, especially pollinating insects and planting perennial wildflowers on the uncultivable strips of land. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082624000346
Ikonoclast: – “The irresistible force is climate change.“
Indeed. Climate change is accelerating, driven by an increasing Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI). See the EEI graph in Berkeley Earth’s Jan 12 report by Robert Rohde titled Global Temperature Report for 2023.
Meanwhile, more climate records keep being broken…
Prof Eliot Jacobson tweeted Feb 8:
The temperature in the Tasman Sea off Coffs Harbour, on the state’s Mid North Coast, and north is currently 26.5 degrees – two to three degrees above the average for late summer, reports Weatherzone. That’s hot enough to sustain a tropical cyclone!
The Southern Hemisphere SAT has reached an average temperature of 17 °C for the first time in observational history! (see Climate Reanalyzer)
It seems the World (60°S-60°N) SST graph will also need a bigger Y-axis soon… (see Climate Reanalyzer)
When will +2.25 °C on the Y-axis be insufficient for a graph of global 2 m surface
temperature anomalies (relative to pre-industrial baseline)? Later this decade perhaps?