Adopting new tech and clean tech - how quickly will (can) the world change?

Our experience of markets in the last 30 years tell us what to expect when disruptive technologies hit, how quickly new successful technology rushes through the economy, washing the old way of doing things from memory. The adoption of smarter technologies - including cleantech, automation, robotics and 3D printing - in homes, enterprises, and every industry in every region and city, and connected through social media and smart devices including wearables, is changing the world and the way we interact with family, friends (and foes), and customers, and much faster than (almost) anyone imagined.



Previous markets warn us about how quickly new disruptive technologies might arrive. New supply chains arise far more quickly than in the past. And now clients are demanding cleaner, cheaper, faster, smarter - and also more secure. But, curiously, most market forecasts for new technology largely assume business as usual - traditional usage patterns continuing without anticipating shifts as fast, or disruptive. So, how quickly will we respond, and change how we safely live and work in the cities we reside in? What does this mean for how we plan and regenerate infrastructure in regions and cities? What does this mean for future for safety and for quality of life and rapidly changing community expectations? What might safe, smart, liveable cities look like by 2040?

To illustrate both the evolution of my thinking and my forecasts, when including updates below, I have also left my old projections up. With my first simple forecasts released in 2010 (but this page initiated in 2014), and improving them over the past seven years, I now claim to have the 'least wrong' projections of any published on energy in general, and clean tech and renewables specifically.

While the forecasts posted below reveal both breadth and depth of the work I do, it is not the entirety of the work I do - that is reserved for clients.

If you need more, contact me at Future Smart Strategies: www.futuresmart.com.au

Technology diffusion and technology disruption

Technology diffusion is well understood - we've got countless examples - cars, TVs, BBQs, cell phones, wind turbines, cosmetics, iPods, solar PV, video records, DVD players, LED lights, iPads. And not just things but things within things - like ABS, and fuel injection and airbags in cars - they are all the same, and diffusion rates can be logically and rationally extrapolated. That's how diffusion curves work, and that is the simple model, but not simplistic.

Roger's S Curve describes how technology diffusion used to work

But Accenture have described the big bang model - in the 21C technology is arriving faster and cheaper than ever before - change is inevitable, and it won't be slow.

The key challenge is that prediction is always difficult, especially when it's about the future (quoting Niels Bohr).

Prediction of future success is most likely prone to fail. But modelling success in motion using real metrics of diffusion is feasible and logical - as for forward projections in clean tech. There is a lot of data on past diffusions; appraisals by incumbents generally deny reality of impending change, and so minimise preparedness of both themselves and the markets they service. Again cleantech is an example, the upward trendline of renewables is undeniable, but the incumbent fossil fuel industry rejects the possibility of rapid change.

More on cleantech - technology diffusion rates and adoption of new technology

Globally electricity markets are in the process of rapid change, and this shouldn't surprise.

Globally and in Australia electricity consumption is falling primarily as a conseq uence of energy efficiency measures in homes and businesses and across industry. The addition of renewable energy is changing the way we generate electricity. Uptake rates of technology are never glacial in pace - in WA the swap from coal to gas was less than 30 years - 65% of electricity generation in the state was from coal in 1979 moved for purely economic reasons to 65% from gas in 2009.

Technology shifts are usually rapid and measured in the lifetime of a commodity - for smartphones 1-2 years, for household appliances 3-5 years, for motor cars 10-12 years, and for large electricity generation around 25-30 years. We should expect that in less than 30 years (the clock has already started) more than half of generation capacity will be renewable simply because of technology adoption.

It will happen faster, and the share will be higher, because on top of economic advantages, we have policies in place around the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Once a change commences, the rest is history, and for energy markets the clock stated ticking three years ago in 2010.

Added 3 December 2013.

Clean jobs will define successful 21st Century economies.

Last century was command and control, this century is suggest and choose

Clean jobs will define successful 21st Century economies.

Last century was command and control, this century is suggest and choose. This moves beyond the collaborative architectures being proposed for business, and simple reflects on the open architecture that will come about from an internet of things versus an internet of people.

The more devices are online, the more data that flows between things, the better our energy efficiency will be, and the easier to harvest energy from intermittent sources. The apparent intent of Google to be a part of the energy services arena through its recent purchases including Nest would support this conclusion.

Some of the evidence of what Google is doing is spread through some of my recent tweets:

Internet of Things, future of #marketing: be careful of what you wish for https://twitter.com/ProfRayWills/statuses/425608195457835008

Can Google reduce home energy consumption? Why Google paid $3.2 Bn for Nest Labs' smart thermostat @ClimateProgress https://twitter.com/ProfRayWills/statuses/424387478837940224

Google adds list of hi-tech acquisitions: Deepmind artificial intelligence biz and Nest Labs https://twitter.com/ProfRayWills/statuses/428186771696803840

Added 3 December 2013

Energy efficiency and technology adoption

In real estate it's "location, location, location."

With energy the primary thing, the cheapest thing, the greenest thing is "efficiency, efficiency, efficiency." Or to use a good speech writer's phrase - less is more.

As far as efficiency is concerned, all that has been done to date hasn't scratched the surface.

For the past 100 years up until the mid 2000's, new appliances we deployed invariably used more electricity than the ones we replaced. By 2008, most new appliances were for the first time using significantly less than the old appliances reductions in energy consumption from appliances.

US EPRI are "conducting a multiyear energy efficiency demonstration project focused on six “hyper-efficient” technologies. These technologies may have the potential to reduce electric energy consumption in residential and commercial applications by up to 40 percent for each application. If fully deployed, the technologies could reduce the demand for electric energy between 10 percent and 20 percent" - see the data at http://www.epri.com/Our-Work/Pages/Energy-Efficiency.aspx and look at the ipad report which is poorly named and talks about lots of technology - which I've linked here - http://www.epri.com/Our-Work/Documents/Energy%20Efficiency/iPadEnergyConsumeExecSummary6-2012Final.pdf

It is the arrival of these devices that is the primary reason for the drop of consumption on grids across the developed world including US, UK and Australia. Australia is the best example because the GFC had a minimal impact and its economy and population have both been growing strongly and yet electricity consumption has been falling since 2008 because of the arrival of energy efficiency and enhanced by the arrival of distributed generation from solar since 2010.

Added 3 December 2013

Wills R 2011 Smart, smarter, smartest - Zigbee preparing for the next wave of home innovation. The Builders Choice pp 136-138 December 2011 www.thebuilderschoice.com.au

Added 23 January 2014

On energy return on energy invested – EROEI

Energy is embedded in any commodity through all the accumulated processes of resource extraction/manufacture/distribution/use whether that be for coal, oil, gas, nuclear, wind or solar. The component cost of energy of any commodity is paid for in dollars throughout the process, and ultimately by the end consumer in purchasing the product.

As solar panels get cheaper because efficiencies of all these processes improve, and most particularly in manufacturing, the amount of energy embedded in the product must logically have declined, unless the energy cost has become a bigger proportionate share of the unit cost of the product.

Wacker Chemie suggested an energy payback of less than one year was achieved by solar in 2010, as shown in the graph above from Feb 2012 based on 2010 data.

EROEI is therefore a dynamic number, and assessing the EROEI using data from 2010 cannot tell you what EROEI is in 2015, nor what it will be for a new panel in 2020. In 2015 energy payback of a solar panel is, by my estimate, now below 4 months – and the remainder of its expected 25+ year life is net energy positive, making a return > 50:1 EROEI.

Added 2 July 2015

Forecast rate of change in energy generation

I have forecast in other forums that the world will reach minimum 50% generation of renewable energy no later than 2038 based on well understood principles of capital replacement and of technology uptake rates:

1. most energy generation assets have a capital investment life of around 25 years,

2. most of the world coal fired power stations are older than 10 years,

3. most of the investment decisions in the next several years will still include some fossil but will be more than half be renewable, and after 2015-16 I predict no new coal anywhere, and a diminishing amount of natural gas will be built.

4. because of the age of most fossil fuel generation there will be a substantive wave of retirements through the decade of the 2020s

5. in the 2020s only very low emissions will be built - mostly renewable, some nuclear, and no natural gas. (much more renewables than nukes because we cant build nukes quickly - takes at least 6-8 years, while large renewable projects can go up in a year). By the 2020s storage will be cheap and doing the work that gas might otherwise have been needed for.

6. Based on above, my 50% of renewables may be ten years earlier than my conservative estimate of 2038 - that is 50% by 2028.

In the meanwhile, because of energy efficiency the world will have only modest growth in generation capacity, if any. I contend generation capacity will not grow as forecast by the bulk of the energy institutions (IEA, US EIA etc) and all of the fossil fuel companies.

This is a rather unconventional view I acknowledge - but the view is based on available data and the trend is already clearly seen in western economies since 2008/9 (pre GFC)

Two examples:

US economy has started fuel shifting from coal to gas and adding renewables - now generating more electricity than nukes - and energy efficiency is working:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/01/us-carbon-emissions-lowest-levels

The strongest evidence comes from Australia: Australia's economy has continued to grow through the GFC, its population continues to grow, and yet: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/aust-co2-emissions-hit-10-year-low/story-fn3dxiwe-1226618378940

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/carbon-price-working-coal-slumps-clean-energy-soars-20130509-2jals.html

The outcome in Australia is a mix of energy efficiency and fuel switching.

For my prediction to be true, a second even more radical contention must be happening - generation growth in China will slow over the next few years and show only minimal growth after 2015/16. Current data indicate China's energy growth has slowed in 2012, and Q1 reports for 2013 are also slower.

Added 3 December 2013 (I need to update links above from mid-year 2013)

Build rates of energy plant.

Solar is the fastest way to build a new utility scale energy source - solar can be built modular with 25 MW built in as little as 4 months, while a 300MW solar farm may take less than 2 years before its ready to start generating electricity. Wind is a little longer, but overall renewables can be added much faster than other conventional generation.

Building a gas-fired power station is the quickest way to build large scale fossil fuel and building nuclear is by far the slowest method of adding utility scale generation to the grid.

An additional constraint on fossil fuel and nuclear power stations is that they require a supply chain of fuel provision to allow them to fire up while renewables simply harvest free energy from the location they are built in, so in fact if the time to get approvals to source fuel resources is factored into build time (because you don't build a power station unless you have confirmed contracts of supply before you can get financial close on building your power station) then the build time of conventional energy is stretched out.

Added 25 June 2016

Simple version.

Updated 2 Feb 2017

Adoption rates of technology in motor vehicles.

Successful introduction of new technologies to the car industry have had reached majority adoption in less than ten years.

This is true for diverse technologies like front wheel drive, fuel injection, multivalve engines, ABS, airbags. All of these technologies saw rapid adoption - hybrids and EVs will be no different, and anyone that argues otherwise needs to explain why.

I have suggested in other forums that hybrid sales are likely to be in excess of 50% of vehicles by 2020 based on the current data and translating technology adoption curves, and in contrast to the report linked above. Significant uptake of hybrids has now started around 4% in 2012 (http://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/tab/fuels-infrastructure/data_set/10301) and will accelerate year in year from now.

I expect that significant uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) will start in 2015/16, and that EVs will be near 20% of new vehicle sales by 2020, meaning that more than 2/3 of sales will be hybrid and EV powered in seven years time. US markets are not growing as fast as some other markets in proportional terms, but overall numbers are impressive.

Why EVs? Internal combustion engines (ICE) runs at around 30% peak efficiency at the flywheel, then lose 20-40% of that for transmission losses before the energy actually moves the vehicle forward. ICEs are the automotive equivalent of incandescent light bulbs, which most Governments around the world have now effectively banned from manufacture, importation or sale. One of the earlies movers was Australian Federal Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Hon Malcolm Turnbull who announced in 2007 the phasing out of incandescent light globes from the Australian market over a three year period ending 2010.

Comment added 23 March 2015: 2015 reveals faster uptake than anticipated in 2013. Original forecast used US data as global data not accessible at the time.

Added 3 December 2013.

Updated 23 March 2015

Global data on electric vehicle uptake.

2014 saw 320,000 new electric vehicle registrations around the world - this makes 740 000 EV registrations since 2011, or close to 940 000 since 2003. EV Obsession also have collated data.

With Google, Apple and Virgin all rumoured to be entering the electric vehicle market, I now expect new growth in 2018 from new manufacturers, greater share of growth from 2018 as production lines are shifted from conventional to EV manufacture, and even greater growth to 2020 as autonomous vehicles from Google and others get added to the production stream.

Technology diffusion is well understood - we've got countless examples - cars, TVs, BBQs, cell phones, wind turbines, cosmetics, iPods, solar PV, video records, DVD players, LED lights, iPads. And not just things but things within things - like ABS, and fuel injection and airbags in cars - they are all the same, and diffusion rates can be logically and rationally extrapolated. That's how diffusion curves work, and that is the simple model, but not simplistic.

With the arrival of additional technologies of automation in vehicles, I contend we will see a rapid intrusion of active driver assist technologies - that is part self-driving cars, with a mix of on- board sensors, cameras, GPS and telecommunications gathering and analysing information using complex computer algorithms, and responding appropriately in safety-critical situations. This technology is already here in early forms through braking systems that include pre-collision braking, vehicle awareness systems that assist the driver with alerts, including in lane changing. Similarly, park assist and self parking cars are a simple component of the final technology in an autonomous vehicle.

The inclusion of this technology in motor vehicles will be followed by an even more rapid conversion to fully autonomous vehicles. Why will this be quick? 90% of traffic accidents are driver error - remove this and roads are safer. Globally 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, costing $US518 billion globally, which fo individual countries is at least 1-2% of annual GDP. All road accidents including the 1600 annual deaths cost Australia in excess of $A20 billion per year. If the public purse could save only 50% of that number, governments around the world will very quickly mandate autonomous vehicles - to the point of potentially banning drivers.

Added 4 April 2015

And faster than that too - hot off the press 2016 forecast:

And to 2030

On electric vehicles, is it possible I'm too optimistic? Perhaps. Just moderating that last forecast, I've been doing my annual review of forecasts oer the past 6 weeks (Aug-Sep 2017) and have concludesd my electric car forecast was perhaps too ambitious. New revision below - you will see that cumbustion engines now surivive to 2025 instead of exiting in 2024!!

Added 8 Sep 2017

No one can predict the future

And then there is the impact of new emerging technology on - well, new emerging technology. I've already mentioned convergence and anitpated there will be an impact, but now I realise I have almost certainly underestimated its impact, leading to assumptions about continuing growth of car use that I now think will not eventuate.

The swap to EVs will be enhanced by mandated scrapping of less safe and more polluting cars as well as the convergence of other tech, accelerates demand for new (electric) vehicles, changing ownership models carsharing, ridesharing, and the additional impact of AI integrated transit

Assumption: 30% loss private cars in 5yrs! I expect it will be bigger - Tony Seba suggests as many as 4 in 5 cars will go.

Added 5 June 2018

Added 5 June 2018

Naturally the updates on autonomy contributes to these updated electric vehicles projections

And impact on global vehicle fleet and oil consumption through both reduced oil use from ICE fleet and oil displaced by electric vehicles.

Some advantages of autonomous vehicles

Road congestion

Self-driving cars will also communicate with one another - in the same way that some smartphone apps already do now - and ease congestion.

Safety

90% of motor vehicle accidents are a result of human error and so cars are built to accommodate human failings. Autonomous vehicles will eliminate human error and effectively crash proof road travel.

Governments faced with significant costs from road accidents including road trauma, ambulances, trauma wards and hospitals, compensation for victims through 3rd party insurance, will move to restrict the operation of current generation vehicles once the new technology is freely available.

Today's road networks are designed with a higher margin of safety for imprecise and sometimes unpredictable movement patterns of human-driven vehicles with wide lanes, shoulders, guardrails, road signs (static and electronic), traffic signals, rumble strips and other safety features. Most, if not all, of these features will not be required for autonomous vehicles.

Productivity

Not only will eliminating losses associated with accidents save the public purse, it will also improve productivity beyond the removal of a burden on the economy, but also because those that might otherwise have been displaced by productive activity will continue to do so. In addition, travel time can become productive, freeing up the person driving to do more productive activities along the journey.

Insurance

Even in the absence of government action, insurers will quickly move to increase premiums on human driven vehicles, while the cost of insurance for autonomous vehicles will likely prove very low.

Efficiency

With the virtual elimination of risk from crashes, cars will no longer require a significant amount of structural steel, roll cages or air bags, among other safety features, and therefore could be much lighter, improving energy efficiency and so operational costs. Further, vehicle operation can be optimised for energy use.

Added 4 April 2015 -

Thought bubble - why it will be even faster?

Because of course the new cars are being built with the hardware included.

As Tesla is doing, additional functionality is arriving with software updates. Tesla vehicles are now up to version 8 of their software release! So, rapid scale of self-driving capability will happen so much faster than anyone is currently considering because it will simply be software upgrade: https://twitter.com/ProfRayWills/status/850674570394648580

Added 8 April 2017

And a new look forecast focused on self-driving vehicles and separating the emergence of increasingly sophisitcated generations of self-driving tech.

Added 8 Sep 2017 (NOTE - updated by graphs above 5 June 2018)

Adding storage - the clean tech tsunami

Storage is understandably seen as the keystone to renewable energy. But while large scale energy storage would on first pass seem to be the the logical best solution for the electricity market to service renewables, will it be the main game? Storage has already been critical in the arrival of portable devices, and driven by demands of laptop computing and mobile (smart)phones. While stationary storage is certainly considered important, the electric vehicle market has probably already been responsible for the arrival of in excess of 20 GW of storage over the past 10 years. Meanwhile markets in Germany, New Zealand and now Australia are considering distributed domestic storage as likely drivers of storage requirements for the next few years. (In developing nations too, modest power requirements mean that storage may in fact be readily and economically achievable.)

Solar was the earthquake, storage will be the tsunami. The energy market is changing forever.

Added 3 December 2013.

The arrival of electric vehicle manufacture on scale will cause the massive scale up of battery manufacture, dropping manufacturing costs and making home energy storage systems affordable. Indeed, this is a key to the Tesla's venture into home storage is to drive the battery market and so bring the price of batteries down.

Added 13 May 2015

Updated forecast May 2017

Updated 6 Jul 2017

(Not quite finished here - signficant updates before end of 2017.)

Clean tech just tech, expect faster adoption rates than telecom and internet.

While car based phones were around prior to 1973, the first handheld mobile phone was launched by Motorola in 1973.

The first modern cellular mobile phone system was created by NTT in Tokyo in 1979.

The first mobile phone call didn't have any noticeable impact on the landline market of the day, but the first potential tremors of the coming technology disruption were certainly talked about. The early mobile phones were few and far between, luggable in size, services were restricted, and perhaps well-described as intermittent, and certainly expensive.

Now mobile phones are cheap, ubiquitous, reliable, coverage very widespread but not complete, and all things mobile still rapidly evolving as we think of new things we can do with mobile phones today.

One of the things added along the way was internet and data.

The modern internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was standardized in 1982, and until 1995 was a research network not available to commercial services, and so its use post-dates the arrival of modern mobile phones and mobile internet data services which was not a part of the mainstream thinking.

The Internet was commercialized in 1995, and the first mobile Internet service, i-mode, deployed in 1999.

And while 'smartphone-like' devices were available as early as 1993, the Ericsson R380 released in 2000 was the first modern smartphone using mobile internet, followed in 2003 by the Blackberry.

But viability of internet services on mobile phones was limited until data prices came down and network providers started to develop systems and services conveniently accessible on phones.

Now mobile internet on smartphones are quite cheap, ubiquitous, reliable, coverage very widespread but not as complete as the mobile network, and all things in mobile data still rapidly evolving as we think of new things we can do with mobile internet today.

The iPhone came along in 2007, and the number of BlackBerrys peaked at 80 million in 2012. In 2013 there were 200 million devices running Apple's iOS7.

As of end of 2013 smartphones are 55% of mobile sales.

Now repeat all of the above and swap 'renewables' for 'mobile phones', and swap 'storage' for 'smartphones', starting the 'renewables' clock in 2008 and the storage clock in 2013, and repeat the name 'Google' in forecasts of uptake often.

Added 3 Feb 2014

An example of tech leapfrogging - foregoing the world standard for telcommunications to, well, the new world standard on telecom.

See more at Our World in Data

Added 23 Sep 2017

The world today

Yes, the energy revolution's only just started

Please Enable Javascript for this Oilprice.com widget to work

Via http://oilprice.com/free-widgets

But this widget doesn't tell the story of the rapid rate of growing renewable installs. A single point in time doesn't define reality, but rather the direction and rate of change is what describes the future, is what really matters - read on!

Are we actually in a tech tsunami?

Once we build more panels that generate power (PV) than consume power (televisions), we might conclude we've arrived.

The true measure of when solar PV is as ubiquitous in Australian households as LCD TV, will be when we start seeing solar panels left out on the verge, alongside the old flat screen TV, as part of the hard rubbish collection.

The panels will be out there, not because they have stopped working, but because the household has decided to upgrade to the latest, most efficient energy self-generation technology – technology it needs to help power its five flat-screen TVs.

The latest data from 2016 shows the tsunami has (by my measure) actually begun - we've arrived! We now produce more solar panels than TV sets!

Originally added 2 May 15, updated graph 25 June 16

This is how I anticipate payback - otherwise known as return on investment - will run for solar and combined solar and storage in Perth, Western Australia, market.

Added 10 April 16

Added 6 July 17

Updated 6 Jul 2017

Yes renewable energy is variable in time and space: some locations have better reources than others.

Top 20 solar nations on pvoutput.org listed by kWh/kw production of panels.

This means that some countries produce a lot more electricity with a lot fewer panels - which means that even though Germany has many more solar panels installed, some other places produce a greater proportion of their total energy from solar.

In Western Australia, regional variability of different technologies is well illustrated.

More homes in the city have solar, but smaller systems.

In north west WA far fewer homes with solar, although on average the systems are bigger, although more regional homes have solar hot water than in the sw.

Added 20 Mar 2015

Added 6 July 2017

Updated 6 July 2017

So how quickly is the world going renewable?

Adoption rates of successful technology is always rapid, and described by Roger's S Curve of diffusion of innovation.

The adoption of clean tech and energy efficiency and renewable energy is proving to be no different. Adoption rates of renewables is following a predictable path of all successful technology.

Australian solar data show the classic growth characteristics of a successful technology intrusion of both wind and solar, with solar showing signs of far greater disruption.

In all generation of electricity, the capacity factor of the power generating plant is important - for wind in Australia capacity factor averages 34%, while the average solar efficiency of panels in Australia for 2014 was 3.365 kWh/kW/day

Australia now has 4 GW of solar installed in 1.37 million homes (as at Jan 2015)

Solar domestic rooftop installs and forecasts for growth of solar in Western Australia.

Updated 1Mar16

Combining contemporary data and my forecast trajectories for the Top 9 solar nations (and adding India as it catches up to be in Top 10 by 2016), China and Japan will dominate solar projects for the rest of the decade.

Adding the most recent data, China is busy changing the world - building the new factories delivering the new 21 Century tech that changes everything. (Thought bubble - if China is setting out to build new car factories, will they build new factories to pump out combustion engine cars or electric cars. My pick is the second one.)

Added 23 Sep 2017

And global capacity growth and forecasts for wind, solar photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP) - and batteries.

The graph above includes my evolving forecasts - as momentum in cleantech has built, I have had to revise my forecasts of 2012 upward in 2014, and again in 2015.

---

UPDATE 10Apr16:

Ever evolving, here is my 2016 version, discarding my previous projections which - despite being one of the highest projections of growth from any forecast on the planet (including Greepeace) - have all been too slow:

TEXT CONTINUES

And then no it doesn't - new update 25 Mar 17 of the graph only one year later - faster than almost anyone imagined, my new forecast:

Added 25 Mar 2017

Ok, now - TEXT CONTINUES

---

Solar will become increasingly utilitarian. Solar is already matching wind in annual capacity additions in 2014, and will overtake wind in total capacity as the renewable energy source of choice by 2019. This momentum will be enhanced as we move from Generation 1 of solar modules (putting solar on top of things, like rooftops) to Gen 2 (building things like rooftops from solar) to Gen 3 (solar is a component of things - like roofing materials, paint, clothing).

When this is then introduced into the global market, the retreat of fossil fuel based energies follows a predictable exit that characterises all superseded and redundant technologies, and so impacts on global emissions. Assumptions below include closure of ageing coal fleet - with >80% of developed nations power plants over 15 years old, by 2025 many ageing coal power stations will be retired, and when they are closed, will be replaced by the energy technology of the day - that is, solar.

Note the curve below includes a factor for energy efficiency, with future growth tempered and then retreating as energy use becomes increasingly efficient.

Added 3 December 2013.

Update 23 Aug 2015.

Lets make that newer and less complicated, but with more detail:

And inclusive of this:

NOTE: This is for electricity only - not 'total energ'y which includes non-electricity energy use too and is what the other 2 graphs above and below show.

Leads to this ...

Added 23 Sep 2017

(I am currently preparing a paper on renewable uptake rates as described above for submission to a peer reviewed journal.)

Renewable energy will solve poverty in developing nations

Renewable energy will be the most accessible and affordable energy and will break poverty by delivering to individuals and will be as effective as micro finance.

Think of telecommunications - if you turned up in Africa 20 years ago and said the only way Africans could make phone calls was to build a copper network. You may have also argued that it was inconceivable for Africans to afford the expensive new emerging technology of mobile phones.

You would have been wrong. 1/2 billion Africans now have mobile phones, with that to reach 1 billion by 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/24/mobile-phones-africa-microfinance-farming. (Update: Actually - in 2015 its already reached 1 billion.)

In 2013 if you turn up and say the only way that African's can have cheap energy is to build coal fired power stations connected through extensive and vulnerable infrastructure to distribute it to through monopoly power providers, you will end up being wrong. Distributed generation delivers at the point of need and as little as 100 watts will make a difference to energy poverty.

Renewable energy is liberating, empowering, and available - it is the mobile phone of energy.

Added 3 December 2013.

Relieving poverty doesn't need fossil fuels or coal - Peru in 2013 initiated a new program to provide electricity to more than two million of its poorest residents using solar panels. Read more

Added 28 December 2013.

How the world's largest companies behave

Leadership can come from many quarters and it won't be just governments that bring on the change.

See