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Sources of uncertainty in long-term global scenarios of solar photovoltaic technology

Nature Climate Change volume 11, pages 266–273 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has consistently outpaced expectations over the past decade. However, long-term prospects for PV remain deeply uncertain, as recent global scenarios span two orders of magnitude in installed PV capacity by 2050. Here we systematically compile an ensemble of 1,550 scenarios from peer-reviewed and influential grey literature, including IPCC and non-IPCC scenarios, and apply a statistical learning framework to link scenario characteristics with foreseen PV outcomes. We show that a large portion of the uncertainty in the global scenarios is associated with general features such as the type of organization, energy model and policy assumptions, without referring to specific techno-economic assumptions. IPCC scenarios consistently project lower PV adoption pathways and higher capital costs than non-IPCC scenarios. We thus recommend increasing the diversity of models and scenario methods included in IPCC assessments to represent the multiple perspectives present in the PV scenario literature.

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Fig. 1: Overview of the analysed scenario ensemble.
Fig. 2: Workflow of the analysis and data sources.
Fig. 3: Visualization of projected PV growth in the overall ensemble, grouped by indicators.
Fig. 4: PV cost data in the overall scenario ensemble.
Fig. 5: Scenario archetypes and text perspectives in the overall ensemble.
Fig. 6: Relative importance of scenario indicators for explaining PV growth, estimated using Shapley additive explanation values for the classification of scenarios into CAGR quintiles.

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Data availability

Data for IPCC SR1.5 and AR5 scenarios are available through the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis portal25,26. Data for non-IPCC scenarios are available in the original sources; metadata for these sources are provided in Supplementary Data 1.

Code availability

The code used for analysis in this study is available from the corresponding author upon request. A code notebook presenting key steps of the analysis is available for download74.

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Acknowledgements

This work received funding from the University of Geneva as well as from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 821124 (NAVIGATE). We thank G. Luderer and L. Hirt for their helpful comments on the analysis.

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  1. Renewable Energy Systems, Institute for Environmental Sciences (ISE), Section of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Marc Jaxa-Rozen & Evelina Trutnevyte

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  1. Marc Jaxa-Rozen
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Contributions

M.J.-R. and E.T. designed the research; M.J.-R. performed the analysis; M.J.-R. and E.T. wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Marc Jaxa-Rozen.

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Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Wesley Cole, Felix Creutzig, Sibel Eker and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–4 and Figs. 1–18.

Supplementary Data 1

References for non-IPCC scenarios included in the analysis.

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Jaxa-Rozen, M., Trutnevyte, E. Sources of uncertainty in long-term global scenarios of solar photovoltaic technology. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 266–273 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-00998-8

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