Two optimistic trends

 It's easy enough to be deeply pessimistic about climate change.  Emissions continue to rise, and while these days one only occasionally encounters unhinged denialists, the acceptance that something needs to be done hasn't yet translated into effective action.  There is lots of "committed to" but little real action.  (Buying scammy carbon offsets isn't real action.  Real action is actually cutting emissions.)  Lots of blah-blah-blah, as Thunberg says. 

But there are two trends which really are signs that things are shifting.

The first is that over the last 14 years, solar has risen from 1% of new generation capacity installed to 51%, wind from 10% to 25%.  Over the same period, coal fell from 46% to 4%.  And this is the gross addition to the stock of coal-powered generation, that is, it does not include shuttering old coal power stations.  The long-term trend lines in the graphic are obvious, with solar moving from an insignificant sliver to dominance, and fossil fuels falling from 2/3rds to 1/7th.

What this means is that emissions from electricity generation, which contributes 30% of CO2 emissions globally, have prolly peaked.  To avoid a rise of 1.5 degrees, electricity emissions would have to fall by 10% a year over the next 10 years, and that isn't going to happen.  Nevertheless, if it happens over the next 20 years (highly plausible), this alone will cut total emissions by ±1.8% per annum.  

The second trend is the exponential growth in EV sales.  Land transport (which however includes diesel-powered freight transport on road and by rail) contributes another ±20% to CO2 emissions.  EV sales are growing by 60% per annum.  That means they could rise 6.5 times between now and 2026, taking them close to 100% of total car and light truck sales.   If car and light trucks last 15 years, that means that from 2026 onwards, emissions from this sector will be falling by 6% a year.

What's more, the car and light truck fleet will help stabilise the grid, either passively, by charging only when grid supply is high, or actively, by contributing some power back to the grid when there's a shortage.

The surge in the price of lithium is a threat, but two new battery technologies are already making their way out of laboratories into factories:  sodium-ion and aluminium-ion.  Battery costs will resume their decline.

N.B. Log scale!

If the transition to a nearly 100% renewable grid and a 100% electric land transport fleet takes 20 years, emissions will fall by 3.5% a year.  And that is almost acceptable.  It's certainly far better than it's been.  We'll miss the target of limiting the global increase in temperatures to 1.5 degrees, but assuming temperatures continue to rise by 0.2 degrees per decade, but halving as emissions halve, we'll avoid 2 degrees.