What is COP28 and why does it matter?
COP28, the world’s largest climate summit, kicked off today in Dubai. It is a full two weeks of events bringing together governments, business leaders, scientists, journalists, and activists from all over the world. This is the 28th “Conference of the Parties [countries].” One of the primary goals of the conference is for countries to see how they are trending against the goals outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement from 2016.
You’ve probably already seen the media coverage talking about “1.5 degrees Celsius.” One of the main outcomes from the Paris Agreements was to limit the global average temperature to increase by fewer than 2 degrees celsius above the pre-industrial levels and ideally, limit it to no more than 1.5 degrees celsius. We are unfortunately on track to race past the threshold 1.5 degrees celsius, so much of the summit will focus on what can be done to change the current trajectory.
Fortunately, deploying solar power at scale is a critical component that will help us limit our global temperature increase. We dove into the upcoming agenda of the COP28 to understand what to look out for regarding solar trends and insights in the rapidly involving industry.
Tripling renewables by 2030 means a lot of solar
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber is calling on the world to triple the amount of renewable energy by 2030. This is unprecedented growth and according to a study by S&P Global Commodity Insights, we would need an additional 4.6 Terawatts of solar and wind capacity by 2030, at an investment of $4.7 trillion. While we’ve tended to fall behind aggressive forecasts like this over the past decade, you can be sure of one thing: solar is going to grow exponentially across the world and it’s just a question of how steep the growth curve will be. More jobs and opportunities for those of us in the industry!
Concentrated Solar Power
On December 8th, Siemens Energy will present data and trends on advances in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). You’ve probably seen solar power plants that leverage Concentrated Solar Power; these are the ones which use mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight onto the panels. These panels then heat a fluid in a receiver, which is used as thermal energy to heat a turbine and generate electricity. The technology is used at various utility-grade plants around the world with more coming online, but smaller CSP systems are also viable.
Siemens is a technology leader in the CSP space, powering many of the components in utility-grade fields today. It will be interesting to learn of recent advances in CSP and better understand the costs & benefits versus traditional PV installations.
Solar Radiation Modification (SRM)
Solar Radiation Modification (SRM), also known as solar geoengineering, is a process by which we would try to reflect solar radiation back into space. While the idea was originally proposed in the 1960s, it has garnered some momentum in recent years as we have pursued alternate paths to limit global warming. While there are various approaches being discussed, the general idea is that through human intervention, we would limit the amount of the solar radiation hitting the earth’s surface. This could be done through Stratospheric Aerosols (SAI), Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), or even space-based methods (e.g. reflecting sunlight with satellites). Recent studies have shown that SRM cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions and there are key risks that need to be understood.
Certainly, approaches limiting the amount of solar radiation hitting the earth would limit the effectiveness of solar power if not engineered properly. On December 5th at the COP28, the Climate Overshoot Commission will present options for reducing climate overshoot, and based on their recent annual report, expect them to dampen excitement around this controversial intervention technique.
Jobs & Upskilling the Solar Workforce
LinkedIn will present research on December 8th about continuing education and upskilling systems for those in the green economy. As we’ve highlighted before, there will be a growing skilled labor shortage to meet our production and implementation goals in the United States and around the world. It will be interesting to see what LinkedIn highlights in their research and how they position their career networking site to help solve fore the workforce gap.
Water Needed for the Clean Energy Transition
On December 5th, the COP28 Presidency along with multiple partners will present on the water requirements needed to fuel the clean energy transition. All energy sources and battery storage production require significant amounts of water, which may become a scarce resource with warming temperatures around the world.
However, it is important to note that solar power uses a modest amount of water compared to traditional power sources. An estimate from the SEIA based on the Nevada Solar One plant states that solar requires 300,000 gallons per acre per year. This is only 25% of what most agriculture requires in the same state of Nevada.
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