Report Highlights Projected Growth in Solar, Storage, and Clean Hydrogen
Deloitte Insight is a global provider (with offices in 134 countries) of advisory, audit, assurance, consulting, risk management, and tax services, along with propriety research. Their US renewable energy industry outlook report for 2024 sees growth in solar, storage, and clean hydrogen, with minimal growth in wind. The report, released in December 2023 by Deloitte’s Research Center for Energy & Industrials, projects around 100,000 new jobs will be created this year.
A Deloitte survey found that only 2% of respondents saw no constraints on their renewable energy deployment plans for 2024. For others, the top concerns were costs (32%), permits (24%), and resilience during adverse weather events (18%).
The same respondents said gas (46%) and nuclear (34%) were likely to be the most resilient to extreme weather events in their territories. Coal and solar (8% each) and wind (4%) were deemed less reliable.
Current solar module capacity is 13.1 gigawatts-direct current (GWdc), and this is projected to increase to a total of 57.3 GWdc in 2024. Meanwhile, production of solar module components (polysilicon, ingots, wafers, and cells) are projected to increase by 4.5 GWdc (polysilicon), 3.3 GWdc (ingots and wafers), and 14.3 GWdc (cells), respectively.
Current battery storage is 28.3 GWh/year. This is projected to increase by 212.0 GWh/year to a total of 240.3 GWh/year, more than an eight-fold increase.
Clean hydrogen through electrolyzers is currently 1.0 GW/year, which is projected to double to 2.0 GW/year in 2024.
Some 72,557 construction (five-year) jobs and 24,193 operations (permanent) jobs are expected to be created for solar, storage, wind, and clean hydrogen plants, for a total of 96,750 jobs. Among these, 30,088 will be for solar, 40,236 for storage, 8,059 for wind, and 18,367 for clean hydrogen.
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