This 16-page report estimates the total global resource potential from solar and wind. Solar resources are 20-100x larger than for wind. And more economical. Wind turbine wake losses are a growing controversy. Hence, will future renewables growth shift more towards solar?
“Renewable energy” often refers to both solar and wind energy. As though they should be treated similarly, and assumed to grow in equal proportions. Indeed, across the world’s 31,250 TWH of global electricity generation in 2024, 8% was wind and 6.8% was solar, which is a relatively equal mix.
However, solar and wind are really no more similar than pasta and turnips. In a world of starches, both are decidedly “not bread”. But there the commonality ends. Our diverging economic outlook for wind and solar is explained on pages 2-5.
Hence, what if the future split of wind and solar deployment followed a pure economic cost curve, or was split according to the total amount of solar and wind resources actually available on planet Earth?
Global solar resources that could be harvested on Earth likely exceed 16M TWH pa, enough to power human civilization 200x over, on today’s energy consumption. The physics and derivation of these numbers is on pages 6-7.
Global wind resources that could be harvested on Earth have been estimated at 0.9M TWH pa, across both onshore wind and offshore wind. But this includes low-grade wind resources, with low capacity factors, and in remote locations that are not economically accessible (e.g., deepwater floating wind), per pages 8-10.
Another growing controversy across the wind industry, and especially for total global wind resources, is wake losses, which are reviewed in depth on pages 11-15.
We conclude that economically attractive solar resources are 20-100x larger than wind resources. Hence, we have updated our global energy models, and downgraded our forecasts for wind capacity additions, as discussed on page 16.