The renewable energy Big Picture: part one

By Zachary Shahan on 14 December 2012

As I mentioned in my article covering the latest US Solar Market Insight report, I recently gave a presentation on solar power growth. But the presentation was actually on much, much more than that, as you’ll see in the article below and in the one to follow tomorrow.CleanTechnica

It’s a Small World

Unbeknownst to me until a few months ago, there’s a renewable energy graduate program at a university here in Wrocław (the city where I live). Turns out that at least one of the students currently in the program is a CleanTechnica reader. He noticed that I was living in Wrocław, and decided to reach out to me. We met up at a coffee shop one day to talk solar energy (for several hours), and not long after that I was invited to give a guest lecture to his class.

Knowing that the students were more focused on the science and engineering side of things, I decided to focus my presentation on the solar and wind energy markets and key policy topics. I figured it would also be worth sharing it with you all (with plenty of text added in place of my vocal commentary, and with some chart switcharoos and additions, including a few from the new US Solar Market Insight report, which was released less than an hour after my presentation ended).

So, anyway, that’s the story; let’s get rolling….

Notably, the info below doesn’t even take into account the tremendous health costs of coal and natural gas, which would make them much more expensive “at the register” if actually included in the price.

Solar Power Price Drops

1.5 years ago, GE projected that solar power would be cheaper than fossil fuels (on average) within 5 years. With 3.5 years left, GE’s prediction definitely seems within reach. In fact, GE was putting big money into a solar cell manufacturing plant in Colorado, but in January it pulled the plug on that due to the fast-falling prices of competing solar cells. In other words, solar prices are falling even faster than GE had thought they would (and faster than most analysts and renewable energy followers thought they would).

I’ve shared the following two graphics a few times in the past couple years. They make a rather important point that doesn’t seem to get enough attention: solar power projects go up relatively fast, while nuclear and coal power plants require many more years to get designed, planned, permitted, and built. With nuclear and coal costs rising while solar costs are quickly falling, by the time a new nuclear or coal power plant would be built, its electricity would already be more expensive than electricity from solar (or wind, for that matter):