Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

by Paul Hawken

Off the grid, rooftop panels can bring electricity to rural parts of low-income countries. Just as mobile phones leapfrogged installation of landlines and made communication more democratic, solar systems eliminate the need for large-scale, centralized power grids. High-income countries dominated investment in distributed solar until 2014, but now countries such as Chile, China, India, and South Africa have joined in. It means rooftop PV is accelerating access to affordable, clean electricity and thereby becoming a powerful tool for eliminating poverty. It is also creating jobs and energizing local economies. In Bangladesh alone, those 3.6 million home solar systems have generated 115,000 direct jobs and 50,000 more downstream.

Since the late nineteenth century, human beings in many places have relied on centralized plants that burn fossil fuels and send electricity out to a system of cables, towers, and poles. As households adopt rooftop solar (increasingly accompanied and enabled by distributed energy storage), they transform generation and its ownership, shifting away from utility monopolies and making power production their own. As electric vehicles also spread, “gassing up” can be done at home, supplanting oil companies. With producer and user as one, energy gets democratized. Charles Fritts had this vision in the 1880s, as he looked out over the roofscape of New York City. Today, that vision is increasingly coming to fruition.

IMPACT: Our analysis assumes rooftop solar PV can grow from .4 percent of electricity generation globally to 7 percent by 2050. That growth can avoid 24.6 gigatons of emissions. We assume an implementation cost of $1,883 per kilowatt, dropping to $627 per kilowatt by 2050. Over three decades, the technology could save $3.4 trillion in home energy costs.

ENERGY WAVE AND TIDAL RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 #29 9.2 GIGATONS $411.8 BILLION -$1 TRILLION REDUCED CO2 NET COST NET SAVINGS