Global rooftop solar panels could potentially cool the earth at 0.13°C, modeling studies suggest
Maps the roofs of buildings in selected global regions. Credit: Natural Climate Change (2025). doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02276-3
Working with one colleague in Singapore and a colleague at MIT, an interdisciplinary team from many institutions across China have discovered evidence suggesting that solar panels can be installed on every rooftop in the world and can replace traditional power sources.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group explains how to calculate global rooftop space using a variety of tools, the power that could occur if the area was fully covered, and the impact it could do so.
In this new effort, researchers have studied the potential impact on global warming if more coordinated efforts were made to replace traditional energy production sources such as coal-fired power plants with a vast number of solar panels. In doing so, they hoped to cast doubt on the denialists who suggested there was no way to stop or reverse global warming.
To make their point, researchers chose to look into the greatest potential of solar panels. We covered all the roofs of the world with them to see what kind of impact it had. To that end, they used a variety of tools to estimate global roof space, such as geospatial data mining and AI applications. By doing so, they found it to be about 286,393 square kilometers. We then considered challenges related to the production of solar power from cells, such as weather, distance from the equator, and the extent of wealth in a particular region.
Global rooftop area distribution. Credit: Natural Climate Change (2025). doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02276-3
The team then split the gloves into clusters to calculate the amount of energy that each solar panel could produce. We then calculated how much a decrease in carbon footprint would occur from switching to solar power within a particular cluster. They added reductions from all clusters together and used those numbers to generate global numbers. By 2050 it was out to 0.05-0.13°C.
The researchers readily acknowledge the difficulty of covering all the roofs of the world with solar panels, but note that their approach shows that there is a path that humanity can take in the coming years to prevent global climate disasters if humanity chooses to take.
More information: Zhixin Zhang et al, Worldwide Rooftop Solar Power Generation may mitigate global warming, natural climate change (2025). doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02276-3
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Citation: Global rooftop solar panels can cool the earth at 0.13°C, modeling research obtained on March 11, 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-03.
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