Ray Kurzweil has made a number of predictions that have been surprisingly correct in the last few decades. His newest prediction, made at a medical technology conference, is that in a little over a decade solar dominate the energy arena. That may be difficult to believe considering it currently only supplies 2% of global energy.

Kurzweil’s basic point, as reported by Solar Power World, was that while solar is still tiny, it has begun to reliably double its market share every two years—today’s 2% share is up from just 0.5% in 2012.

Many analysts extend growth linearly from that sort of pattern, concluding that we’ll see 0.5% annual growth in solar for the foreseeable future, reaching just 12% solar share in 20 years. But linear analysis ignores what Kurzweil calls the Law of Accelerating Returns—that as new technologies get smaller and cheaper, their growth becomes exponential.

So instead of looking at year over year growth in percentage terms, Kurzweil says we should look at the rate of growth—the fact that solar market share is doubling every two years. If the current 2% share doubles every two years, solar should have a 100% share of the market in 12 years.

Okay, technically, that would suggest solar would have a 128% share of the market in 12 years. Some might love that—but it highlights the fact that Kurzweil’s prediction is only partially grounded in the real world. Even 100% share is extremely unlikely—fossil fuel giants are definitely not going down without a fight.

But even those giants ignore Kurzweil at their own peril. He predicted the mobile Internet, cloud computing, and wearable tech nearly 20 years ago—all on the basis of the same principle of accelerating returns that’s behind his solar call.

Article via: fortune.com
Photo via: processindustryforum.com