Globe Editorial Team: The Growing Potential for Affordable and Widespread Solar Energy

Last week, at the midday peak in many countries of the world, solar energy produced one-fifth of the world’s electricity.

The estimates, from Ember, a London-based energy think tank, are meant to underscore the growth of solar power in recent years and its huge potential in the years to come. Ember estimates that solar power will generate 8.2% of the world’s electricity in June. That’s up from 6.7% in June 2023, a surprising increase that is expected to continue to grow rapidly.

Last year, for the first time, global investment in oil eclipsed solar energy, and this year the money going to clean energy is twice as much as for fossil fuels. The cover of the latest issue of The Economist proclaims “the beginning of the solar age.” Ember’s research shows that no source of electricity has ever gained more widespread use than solar energy. This technology, Ember says, will “transform the energy sector.”

The reasons are twofold: the fight against climate change and the potential of abundant, affordable energy to drive economic growth.

Canada, however, has only experimented with solar energy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2022, solar energy generated 0.5 per cent. electricity in this country. (Hydro power led with 61%; fossil fuels produced 19%; nuclear power 13% and wind 6%). Ontario led the way in solar energy, followed by Alberta.

There’s a lot of untapped solar energy. Canada has long relied on water and fossil fuels, supplemented by nuclear power. The best hydro sites are being developed. Nuclear is having a bit of an awakening. Wind is growing, but solar is largely ignored. That needs to change. As provinces led by British Columbia and Quebec expand their power grids to electrify transportation and heat homes, it’s an economic mistake not to include solar—along with increasingly cheap battery storage—in 21st-century electrical systems.

Changes can happen quickly, and solar power could flourish in places with little sunlight and limited land. Consider the Netherlands, a major producer of methane a decade ago, which now has more solar power per capita than any other country except Australia. The strategy is to put solar panels everywhere, from the roofs of several million homes to churches and old landfills. Solar power could produce 17% of Dutch energy in 2023, up from 1% in 2015.

Half of the Netherlands’ energy comes from renewable sources, up from about 20 percent in the late 2010s. This is what energy security looks like. Europe was enslaved by Russian natural gas. It is moving away from importing fossil fuels. Industrial powerhouse Germany generated more than half of its electricity from renewable sources last year.

In Australia, a major exporter of fossil fuels, nearly 40 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources, about twice as much as five years ago, a combination of rooftop solar, grid-scale solar and wind. That has helped drive down wholesale power prices.

The success of other countries is effectively a response to the losers in Canada, who claim ideological allegiance to fossil fuels and are happy to state the obvious: The sun doesn’t shine at night. No one is proposing a 100 percent solar grid. The nature of electricity generation and distribution is changing, away from all-in bets on massive power plants and toward a decentralized, dynamic grid that responds more efficiently to demand and is less susceptible to the capricious price spikes of fossil fuels.

Batteries are critical to the continued expansion of renewable energy sources, and in Canada, Ontario is taking big steps in reversing Premier Doug Ford’s past mistakes on clean energy. In May, Ontario said it would soon have about 3,000 megawatts of energy storage, or more than 5 per cent of the provincial grid’s capacity.

Provinces are moving in the right direction, at varying speeds, but ambition needs to be raised. There is no reason why Regina can’t be the solar capital of Canada. Early policy work and investment across governments is paying off, and this month a new federal clean technology investment credit went into effect to support renewables and energy storage.

Humans have always relied on the sun as a source of life. Converting sunlight into electricity first occurred in the 1950s, but a decade ago it was still too expensive. Today, its potential to provide cheap and abundant energy could strengthen economies – people’s lives – around the world for decades to come.