Forbes Sustainability – Could Rooftop Solar Really Provide Enough Electricity For The Entire World?

With countries racing to end their reliance on the fossil fuels that cause climate change, it’s a boom time for renewable energy. Now, an international team of researchers has determined that if every available rooftop was equipped with solar panels, they could generate enough electricity to power the world.

At least, in theory.

In their assessment published in Nature Communications, a team led by energy researchers in MaREI at University College Cork in Ireland calculated a figure for the total surface area of all the rooftops in the world: some 0.2 million square kilometres—an area almost the size of the U.K. The authors then worked out that, if all the surface area was covered with solar photovoltaic panels, they could generate a total of 27 petawatt hours of electricity per year—more than the combined electricity consumption of the world in 2018.

Read the full article in Forbes Sustainability HERE

Find the study HERE