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melling

Solar is less than 1% of electricity:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

Current projections have the United States at 10% solar power by 2025:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_St...

"A report finds that solar power's contribution could grow to 10% of the nation's power needs by 2025:"

I don't think that's enough clean energy to make a sufficient difference.

My feeling is that if we were on a good trajectory, Bill Gates and friends wouldn't be looking to create a huge fund for more research:

http://qz.com/859860/bill-gates-is-leading-a-new-1-billion-f...

Being discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155146

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Globally solar represents more than 1% of electricity.[1] The long term growth rate has been around 40% p.a.[2] If that growth rate stays for 10 more years, the global energy market is going to look very different.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2015/06/12/solar-power-passes-1-gl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics

93% of new generation capacity coming online each month is from renewables, according to the EIAs "Electric Power Monthly" and "Electricity Monthly Update" reports.

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/#tabs_unit-4

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/

I think you're reading it wrong:

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm...

Natural gas: 1,087,236 1,011,464 7.5%

Solar: 28,058 19,684 42.5%

A lot more natural gas came online than solar. The solar percentage is so high because it's an increase over a much smaller number.

EDIT: I included natural gas in the total generation mix. That's my mistake.

I don't discount additional natural gas coming online; that's a good thing. It throttles faster than nuclear and coal, and produces far less CO2 than coal generation. Natural gas is almost a requirement as renewables scale up until batteries for utility scale storage have dropped in price to be competitive. This is already happening: Tesla is contracting with several utilities to replace their natural gas peaker plants with battery storage substations.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=25172

"Electric generating facilities expect to add more than 26 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale generating capacity to the power grid during 2016. Most of these additions come from three resources: solar (9.5 GW), natural gas (8.0 GW), and wind (6.8 GW), which together make up 93% of total additions. If actual additions ultimately reflect these plans, 2016 will be the first year in which utility-scale solar additions exceed additions from any other single energy source."

United States 1,068.4 Gigawatt

It doesn't make sense to include natural gas. We added 15GW of renewable energy to our 1068 GW. We really need to do a lot better. Your optimism is unfounded.

So, we should do less? The first 1% is the hardest, the next 1% slightly easier, by the time it gets to 10% probably 80% of the hard challenges will be overcome. Successful adoption curves always look like hockeysticks, which means a slow early grind. Less carbon is always better, and taking the gains we can now is better than waiting for perfection.

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