Bill admits that this is back-of-the-envelope math and doesn't include labor, transmission, etc, but the cost of enough solar panels to power the world is....around $2.5 trillion. We spend $7 trillion a year on fossil fuel subsidies. This is a solvable problem.
No, the world does not “spend” $7 trillion a year on fossil fuel subsidies. The opportunity cost of governments of not charging their domestic customers full market prices for fossil fuels and electricity in 2022 (a year of very high international prices) was $1.3 trillion.
The remainder of that $7 trillion (a number from a small team at the IMF) — $5.7 T — is the IMF’s estimate of undertaxed externalities related to fossil fuel consumption. Some $4.5 T of that relates to emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants. But $1.2 T relates to what the IMF calls …
… “vehicle externalities” — the social costs of congestion (time wasted sitting in traffic jams) and road accidents. Yet those externalities would be just as large if all the world’s vehicles were EVs. It’s an externality of DRIVING, not fossil fuel use. See my 📌ed skeet for more.