The $7 trillion solar tsunami in our midst

Thursday, August 6, 2015

While world leaders have been talking a lot but doing little in the run-up to the UN climate conference in December, the private sector has been forcefully tackling climate change.

A solar tsunami is sweeping across the globe and politicians would do well to recognise its importance and help it along.

Falling costs and financial market innovations are making solar the preferred power option in many countries – and the tsunami is only getting started.

Solar energy is already the cheapest form of electricity in many countries – well on its way to becoming the absolute cheapest everywhere by 2025.

In many countries endowed with sun, the cost of solar power generation is already below 5 cents per kilowatt – a level competitive with any power generation source, including coal and gas. In a leading solar country like Germany, costs have declined with as much as 40 per cent over the last three years.

And that’s before battery storage systems – which will transform the utility of solar power systems by storing the electricity for use when the sun’s not shining – become ubiquitous and cheap, as they appear set to do over the next three to five years.

 

Source: Eco Business (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Energy, Environment
Tags
renewable energy, solar