The amounts of renewables needed to replace fossil fuels is huge. Up to 17% of the often estimated 51 gigatons per year of the world’s carbon budget could be used to manufacture PV modules, and that is just for solar – it doesn’t count wind turbines. We must triple, then double that much production to meet the requirements for meeting decarbonization goals by the required dates.
“If we want to hit the decarbonization goals set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as much as a sixth of the remaining carbon budget could be used to manufacture PV modules,” Matthew Reese said. “That’s the scale of the problem—it’s a massive amount of manufacturing that has to be done in order to replace the energy sources being used today.”