Forecasting is tough. And, there is a perception problem, forecasts are taken all too often as some form of firm projection that can be taken to the bank rather than a look to the future within a set of assumptions. Forecasting amid great change — technological or otherwise — is even tougher. And, we are amid a period of great (often very tough to predict, to forecast) change.
Major forecasting organizations (both public (such as EIA, IEA, IEEJA), non-profit, and private) have had a horrendous track record when it comes to clean-energy penetration since roughly the turn of the century. Writ large, in the forecasting world, one should see roughly a balance of over- and under-estimates over the years as analysts learn and seek to adapt their analytical approaches to real-world events. When it comes to clean energy systems (wind and solar), however, there are few and far between examples of ‘over estimates’ as to the pace of penetration and the falling prices — with the vast majority of forecasting efforts showing extremely pessimistic undershooting as to solar and wind system progress.
Electric transportation appears to be following the same trend. See, for example, Daniel Cohan on why the EIA electric vehicle forecasting is unduly pessimistic. The latest IEA report on electric vehicles seems to have its issues as well. Let us focus on an arena undergoing incredibly rapid change: large vehicles, in this case, electric buses.
Here is how Bloomberg summarized the IEA forecast on electric buses:
5. Buses are going electric too
There will be 1.5 million electric buses in use worldwide by 2030, up from 370,000 last year, according to the IEA.
Almost 100,000 electrified city buses were sold last year, 99 percent of them in China.
- 370,000 electric buses operating in 2017
- 100,000 added to fleets in 2017
- 1.5 million to be in use by 2030