Assessing worldwide future potentials of renewable electricity generation: Installable capacity, full load hours and costs

Abstract

Several studies calculate the potential of renewable energies throughout the world. However, these studies vary in the underlying assumptions and do not consider several technologies within a uniform methodology, which affects comparability. In this paper, we calculate the worldwide potentials of ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), and wind onshore and offshore on a 6.5 by 6.5 km grid. The results consist of installable capacity, generated electricity, and specific cost of electricity generation. Our methodology combines high-resolution data for land uses, slope, and hourly weather data with a thorough analysis of different factors for wind power, like hub heights and rotor diameters, and solar power plants, like tilt angle, and temperature-related loss of efficiency. The results show that the summed-up potential capacity of ground-mounted PV surpasses the amount of CSP, wind onshore and offshore combined with 450 TW. Given the cost-potential curve, ground-mounted PV reaches 560,000 TWh at costs below 20 €/MWh, which is twice the projected worldwide primary energy supply of the World Energy Outlook 2022 for the year 2050 with 205,557 TWh. The calculated results can function as input factors for energy system models, which are an important tool to analyse the energy transition.