By Chris Mooney | The Washington Post
The world’s energy portfolio will get vastly cleaner by the year 2040, says a new long-term energy outlook from Bloomberg New Energy Finance — but not clean enough.
Out to 2040, the world will see a jaw-dropping growth of solar energy, especially on rooftops. BNEF projects $ 3.7 trillion of solar investment in the next 25 years — 35 percent of new electricity-generating capacity. And $2.2 trillion of that investment will be for individual rooftops or other “local” installations, rather than large utility-scale arrays.
If you’re worried about the climate, however, then coal doesn’t decline nearly fast enough as part of the world mix in this scenario. Fossil fuels will still provide 44 percent of our power in the projection, as an armada of new coal plants come online to provide cheap power in developing nations, according to BNEF.
