Solar photovoltaic capacity demand for a sustainable transport sector to fulfil the Paris Agreement by 2050.

The Paris Agreement sets a clear target for net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the mid‐21st century. This implies that the transport sector has to reach zero GHG emissions mainly through direct and indirect electrification in the form of synthetic fuels, such as hydrogen and Fischer‐Tropsch (FT) fuels. The results of this research document that this very ambitious target is possible. This research analyses the global solar photovoltaics (PV) demand for achieving the Paris targets in the transport sector by the year 2050. The methodology is composed of the derivation of the transportation demand converted into final energy demand for direct electrification, hydrogen, methane, and FT‐fuels production. The power‐to‐gas (H2, CH4) and power‐to‐liquids (FT fuels) value chains are applied for the total electricity demand, which will be mostly fulfilled by PV, taking into account previous results concerning the renewable electricity share of the energy transition in the power sector for the world structured in 145 regions and results aggregated to nine major regions. The results show a continuous demand increase for all transportation modes till 2050. The total global PV capacity demand by 2050 for the transport sector is estimated to be about 19.1 TWp, thereof 35%, 25%, 7%, and 33% for direct electrification, hydrogen, synthetic natural gas, and FT fuels, respectively. PV will be the key enabler of a full defossilisation of the transport sector with a demand comparable with the power sector but a slightly later growth dynamic, leading to a combined annual PV capacity demand of about 1.8 TWp around 2050. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]