Silent Solar

The following is loosely translated from the original Bill McKibben article.

Solar panels have, over the last months, suddenly gotten so cheap that they’re now appearing in massive numbers across much of the developing world. Without waiting for what are often moribund utilities to do the job, business and home owners are getting on with electrifying their lives, and doing it cleanly.

How do we know? Basically by good sleuthing. The first account I saw came from Azeem Azhar and Nathan Warren. They were looking at Pakistan, where power prices in the wake of Putin’s Ukraine invasion have soared so dramatically that sales of electricity have gone down ten percent in the last two years…. Basically, Pakistanis were buying huge quantities of very cheap Chinese solar panels and putting them up themselves.

In the first 6 months of 2024 Pakistan added 13 GW of solar PV capacity, or 28% of its total electricity generating capacity at the end of 2023 of 46 GW. To put this in perspective, the United States added 20 GW of solar PV capacity in the same time period or 8% of our total electricity generating capacity at the end of 2023 of 238 GW.

As Azhar and Warren point out, by the end of the year, Pakistan’s distributed solar system could be nearing half the capacity of its entire grid! This isn’t just growth; it’s a silent revolution in energy production.

Africa

Something similar is happening in African countries—Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, on and on.

Namibia has a total electricity generating capacity of 0.637 GW, with 11% provided by solar PV.

Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, has a total electricity generating capacity of 0.2 GW, with 15% provided by solar PV.

South Africa has a total electricity generating capacity of 5 GW, with 9% provided by solar PV.

All this is happening without any help from governments, and except for South Africa without financing from banks, who haven’t yet learned how to evaluate the credit risk. This is extraordinary news, in large part because it’s happening in places where people most need power. This won’t just transform the climate, it will transform lives. But nothing beats the idea that solar panels are suddenly sprouting, as if by magic, precisely where they’re needed most. If we can get there fast enough—before we’re overwhelmed by droughts and floods—then a sunny new world is entirely possible!