A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that continued cost reductions for renewable energy sources like wind and solar and new technologies like batteries are continuing to squeeze out the traditional role that has been played by fossil fuel energy sources.
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has been much in the news since it released its report Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2017. Article after article has told us that it said we could see the costs of renewable energy drop to meet those of fossil fuels by 2020.
Lazard is a global asset management company that tracks the cost of producing electricity, among other things. It uses a measure called the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), which averages the estimated costs of construction, maintenance, and fuel for electricity generating assets over the number of megawatt-hours that each is expected to produce over its lifetime. In simple terms, it is one way of comparing different ways of making electricity to see which cost more and which cost less.
Almost every nuclear power plant in the US is losing money. New nuclear facilities will never be profitable says BNEF. Green Tech Media says solar in the US will equal nuclear in installed capacity by the end of this year.
A new research note from MAKE Consulting has confirmed what many have said before, the record low prices being awarded at renewable energy auctions across the world throughout 2016 and 2017 are indicative of the increasing competitiveness of renewable energy technologies globally.
A report published last week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed that new ultra-supercritical coal would be the most expensive form of new energy supply in Australia, well above the Levelised Cost of Energy for other sources such as wind, solar, and natural gas.
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.
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.
These are 5 messages that I think anyone wanting a better US economy (or a better economy in practically any country), anyone wanting national energy freedom (aka energy independence), anyone wanting to advance the most cost-effective choices for electricity generation, and anyone wanting to make logical energy decisions should know and share with others.
Originally published on Nexus Media. By Jeremy Deaton Renewables are cheaper than coal and gas across much of the United States. For the second year in a row, wind and solar accounted for roughly two-thirds of new U.S. generating capacity, while natural gas and nuclear made up most of the rest. That’s … [continued]
