Solar power is now the least expensive source of electricity in 60 countries around the world, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Why is that important? Many of those countries are part of the developing world, places where, until recently, people have been living in conditions barely more advanced than feudal times.
Solar power growth was more dramatic than almost anyone expected during the Obama administration. That was largely due to global factors — incentives in other countries that ramped up demand in those countries, a subsequent burst in manufacturing capacity (especially in China), and the dramatic drop in solar panel costs that resulted (globally).
Certain people and businesses have found that it’s worthwhile to politicize certain energy matters. As it turns out, a majority of people across party lines want more clean energy from renewable energy resources like solar energy and wind energy. Below are several reasons why, including several that should be especially important to people in primarily conservative areas and with conservative values.
In case you missed any of these or just like to see which CleanTechnica stories have been getting the most attention, below are the 30 CleanTechnica stories from the past week that got the most views. After that, you can see my favorites of the week.
Nearly 10 months ago, Tony Seba, author of the 2014 book Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, posted a video on YouTube, “CleanDisruption.” In both, he projected that a nearly complete disruption of the energy business would begin in 2020 and be well underway by 2022, the year he projects for distributed solar power with battery backup to fall below the cost of transmitting electricity. It is a point at which centralized power plants, if they are to compete with solar-plus-storage, will have to provide power for free. He believes that all centralized electric power producers will be obsolete by 2030, as will conventional cars and utility companies.
The most popular CleanTechnica stories of the week were…
My idea for an answer for the Masdar 2017 Engage Global Social Media Competition came to mind quite quickly after I saw the prompt, which is, “what will be the most important technological development over the next 10 years that will have the greatest impact in reducing climate change risks?”
I’m not going to attempt to identify which CleanTechnica stories of 2016 were my favorites, but below is a top 50 list of our 50 most popular articles in 2016 based purely on pageviews. After that, there’s a top 30 list for December (also purely based on pageviews).
Q. What will be the most important technological development over the next 10 years that will have the greatest impact in reducing climate change risks? A. RE<
We’ve seen a lot of commentary on the fact that utility-scale solar power has become the least expensive source of electricity in many places. There is more than that to be found in the data in Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis, Version 10.0, however, and what it tells us is that solar and wind power have benefits apart from the simple facts that their costs are low.
