An interdisciplinary team affiliated with a host of institutions across China, working with one colleague from Singapore and another from MIT, has found evidence suggesting that if solar panels could be installed on every rooftop in the world, replacing traditional power sources, the result could be a reduction in global surface temperatures by as much as 0.13° C.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group describes how they used a variety of tools to calculate global rooftop space and how much electricity could be produced if all that area was covered and the possible impact of doing so.

In this new effort, the researchers studied the potential impact on global warming if a more concerted effort were made to replace traditional energy-producing sources, such as coal-fired power plants, with massive numbers of solar panels. In so doing, they hoped to cast doubt on naysayers who suggest that there is no way to stop or reverse global warming.

To make their point, the researchers chose to look into the maximum potential of solar panels—covering every roof in the world with them, to see what sort of impact that might have. To do so, they used various tools to estimate global roof space, including geospatial data mining and AI applications. In so doing, they found it to be approximately 286,393 square kilometers. They then factored in challenges associated with producing solar power from cells, such as weather, distance from the equator and the degree of wealth in a given area.

The team next divided the globe into multiple clusters and calculated the amount of energy that could be produced by the solar panels in each of them. Then, they calculated how much of a drop in carbon emissions would result from switching to solar power generation in a given cluster. They added reductions from all the clusters together and used those numbers to produce a global number, which they used to calculate a global surface temperature drop. It came out to 0.05–0.13°C by 2050.

The research team readily acknowledge the difficulty of covering all the roofs in the world with solar panels, but note that their approach shows that there is a path that humanity could take to prevent global climate disaster in the coming years, if humanity chooses to take it.

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