Global energy consumption in 2016: 21.8 terawatt hrs. That's 21.8 trillion watt hours. 21,800,000,000,000 watt hours.
Global installed electrical capacity (the most which could be generated at one time, theoretically, if everything was working, but it's never all working at the same time) was 4.15 terawatts in 2017.
Of that, 1.01 terawatts was renewable.
Global installation of new solar capacity in 2019 was 105 gigawatts. That's 105 billion watts. 105,000,000,000 watts. The total capacity of solar at the end of 2019 was 509.3 gigawatts.
If I have my figures straight, that would mean that about half of the renewable generating capacity, and about 1/8 of all capacity, worldwide, is solar. I have no idea whether my figures are even halfway straight. I also don't know the ratio of capacity to actual electricity generated. I'm sure it varies greatly from one type of generation to another. As opponents of alternative energy love to point out to us, is if we hadn't figured it out on our own, the sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow everywhere.
However, some things are completely clear: Solar power is growing at a very fast pace. It's cheaper than coal, oil or gas, and it keeps getting cheaper, while generating electricity with fossil fuels gets more expensive. Utilities, at least ones which are privately owned and operated, would rather generate that cheap solar energy themselves and sell it to the public than have Mr and Mrs Joe Blow Homeowner own solar panels on their roofs and compete with the utilities for the profits from selling solar electricity, if Mr and Mrs have any left over. The regulations about who can generate and sell how much of what type of energy very wildly from place to place across the US. Quite a few oil companies are among the companies who are building huge solar generating plants. Two very key factors which will determine whether or not humanity kills itself off with pollution and climate change, are information and politics.
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