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4.4. Local shortages within a vast global potential

Fig. 4. Comparison of the results in this study with ranges for renewable potentials published in literature, based on the IPCC SRREN report (Edenhofer et al., 2011).

The global resource potential is very large, but the regional picture is more varied with some regions of high abundance (e.g. North Africa and the Americas) and others potentially constrained (e.g. Europe and parts of Asia). Fig. 5 shows results for all technologies for 12 world regions in 2070. As expected, the balance between wind and solar resources depends heavily on the region, with African regions clearly dominating in the ‘solar-rich’ group. Comparing the potentials to the population per region conﬁrms the large variability: the PV potential per capita is highest in Oceania at $2500 GJ/cap/a (large solar resource, sparse population) and lowest in the EU at $40 GJ/cap/a (dense population with comparatively little solar resource). Fig. 5 also shows a range of prospective long-term electricity demand for each region, again based on a long-term global population of 10 billion, expected for the 2080s (United Nations, 2011), and a range of per-capita electricity demand projections of 24–40 GJ/cap/a (see above for explanation on these projections).

Fig. 5. Regional potential results. Annual achievable electricity potential is shown by technology for 2070 for 12 world regions. The lines show indicative estimates of future demand for a global population of 10 billion. Shading within each technology shows the Low, Medium and High availability cases.